Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card

Speaker for the Dead
by Orson Scott Card

So, I've read two of Orson Scott Card's books now, and I must say, they are simply amazing! Speaker for the Dead picks up 3000 years after Ender's Game. How is this possible? Well, with some near-light-speed space travel and a penchant for planet hopping, Ender, our hero, has been able to survive thus far. (If this sort of thing interests you, I'd suggest The Forever War, another lovely science fiction novel).

This time, there's trouble with aliens again. Another sentient species has been discovered on one of the colony worlds, and when deaths occur again, all the worlds are thrown into an uproar. Ender is pulled into this from his new role as a "Speaker for the Dead," one who tells the story of a deceased's life, telling the triumphs and downfalls of a person without judging, revealing the full truth of a person's life upon request.

Again, the issue with human nature and the ability to communicate is raised in this book. When is violence the appropriate response? Is it ever the appropriate response? With these new aliens and their strange customs, humans are quick to jump to violence when these other beings do something foreign and frightening. Apparently they haven't learned in the 3000 years after the war with the Buggers. I really love Orson Scott Card's books because they really appeal to the reader intellectually about different ethical issues that just might be applicable to our lives today.

My rating: 10/10

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

Ender's Game
by Orson Scott Card

"'Tell me why you kept on kicking him. You had already won.' 'Knocking him down won the first fight. I wanted to win all the next ones, too. So they'd leave me alone.'" (14).

With these words, Ender Wiggen explains a main fallacy of humans that binds the events of the whole book together. It's really quite understandable, the circumstances for this conversation. Ender has just beaten a bully, one that had him cornered with his gang to possibly beat up Ender. But the bully ends up in such a terrible condition after Ender is done that he has put him in the hospital. Ender couldn't reason with the other, and he felt endangered by the situation, so he resorted to viciously decimating his opponent's will to ever fight him again.

The plot of the story revolves around an Earth united under one government to support the International Fleet to combat the threat of aliens with whom the humans have had two wars with already. In one of these, the "Buggers," as the humans call the aliens, invaded Earth and inflicted much damage on the whole world. The humans decide that a third war is needed, where a fleet will be created to invade the Buggers' own home world to destroy the alien threat. Not once is it considered whether or not there should be greater efforts in attempting to communicate with these Buggers, and the humans have just decided that the best thing to do would be to completely destroy another form of life. Ender's reasoning for beating up the bully is clearly echoed in the adult's thinking, and this line of thought seems perfectly reasonable to us. However, this is exactly the downfall of the human race. This jump to brutality in the face of a perceived threat. True, Ender is a young child when this happens and he proves the purity of his character in the entirety of the book, but does this make the world any less responsible if it succeeds in fulfilling this line of thought and decimating the alien population? It's an interesting moral issue that is brought up in this novel.

Well, the book isn't all about the issue that I mentioned above. I absolutely loved it because it recounts Ender's experiences in Battle School which trains children in combat in ways that we probably have not thought of before. The students at the school are organized into armies upon promotion from being fresh "Launchies" just sent up to the school which is in orbit around the Earth. These armies have commanders and they fight each other in active combat to test the tactical skills of the commanders as well as train the students in how to fight in null gravity. Ender turns out to be a genius, the best tactical mind that the School, and world has ever seen before. His story as he rises up in the School and is trained further is extremely interesting. The world that Card creates and the characters introduced become very real to the reader.

This is clearly a science fiction novel, and I'm clearly a bit biased in judging this book in that science fiction and fantasy are my two favorite genres. However, I believe that many people would enjoy this book, whether or not they read science fiction normally or not. Ender is a character who is easy to relate to and the issues on human nature and moral accountability are very interesting. This was, I think, the best science fiction/fantasy book that I have read all year and the best that I have read in a long time.

My rating of the book: a definite 10/10

The Wind Singer by William Nicholson

The Wind Singer
by William Nicholson

341 pages

"The tussle was short but intense. During it, much of the mud on Kestrel's legs was wiped on to the Chief Examiner's clothing. When at last he got a grip on her and tore her off, she let go, and he threw her farther than he intended. At once she sprang to her feet and ran. he made no attempt to chase her. he was too shocked at the sight of his muddy clothes. 'My whites!'' he said. 'The little witch!'" (59).

I absolutely love this book. The characters are wonderfully colorful and have so much personality. The main characters, Bowman and Kestrel Hath and Mumpo all have very well developed characterizations. The book is very clearly fantasy, but the fantastical elements are woven in so naturally, and the world is introduced so well that the reader slips right in to the story comfortably from the very beginning.

The plot follows three children as they oppose the system in the city of Aramanth. In Aramanth, everybody's status is determined by a battery of tests, starting when a child is still in its diapers. Everything depends on the tests, and the color of one's clothing reflects the level of society one is at. White robes signify the highest level possible to be attained. The children run away to try to find the key to bringing back the life of the city, to free the people from the oppressive control of the tests. To do this, they go in search for the voice of the Wind Singer, a mysterious structure at the center of Aramanth which nobody really knows the purpose of.

Although it seems to be a simple book, a smooth read, it leaves much to be thought about. The different aspects of the world created in The Wind Singer prompt the reader to think about how our own world works and gently points out the fallacies of our current mindsets. In the quote above, the Chief Examiner demonstrates that his highest priority is his status, which is symbolically dirtied by Kestrel. She shows a complete disregard for the very thing that the Chief Examiner holds dear, which on further thought is more twisted than it seems. Knowledge and the journey of finding it (learning) has been twisted until it is a mere rat race, a perverse mockery of what it really should be. And we see this in our own lives, the constant preoccupation with grades, people sacrificing their whole lives to try to attain what really isn't that important on further examination.

I would definitely give The Wind Singer a 10/10!

Quarter 3 Final Blog

The genre that remains for fourth quarter: Nonfiction/Memoir

I've read quite a few genres this year. I even read a mystery (And Then There Were None), something I haven't done in a very long time. Honestly though, my preferences haven't changed. I still really like Fantasy and Sci-Fi. I mean I read The Silmarillion which stifled the overwhelming need to read fantasy for a while, and I read some other books (The Purgatorio and The Paradiso). The Paradiso was really a bore, though. I felt like the entire time, Dante was just giving a lecture on Church beliefs and being righteous and ho hum blahblahblah. I think I tuned out more times while reading that book than any other book I've read before.
Well, after that, I read The Three Musketeers which was really good fun, but I felt like I hadn't read fantasy in AGES. I actually read The Prophecy of the Sisters when I was on vacation, which was slightly milder fantasy. When I got back, I found Silver Phoenix as a new book while I was shelving in the library. I was dying to feed my fantasy fix, so I read through it relatively quickly. I mean Silver Phoenix was really just a normal, iffy quality debut fantasy novel by an author. Wasn't so great, but it did the job.

So, favorite book of the quarter. I think The Three Musketeers wins this title. Apart from fantasy/sci-fi, I think next in line in my favorite genres is Classics. I just love the language and the style they're written in. Just the way the story unfolds is different too. I love it, and unlike The Count of Monte Cristo which I enjoyed very much too, The Three Musketeers is, like I said before, a much lighter story. I really enjoy Dumas' style, and reading The Three Musketeers was a wonderful experience.

And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie (End!)

So yeah, I finished my first mystery in a very long time! Alright, so that wasn't so bad, I guess. I think that this book was quite suspenseful because of the Little Indian Boy nursery rhyme. I thought Agatha Christie did a pretty good job of keeping it interesting with the twists on how each verse was fulfilled. But, no spoilers right now!

The ending, I thought, was quite good, and ironic. I thought that there was something fishy with the suspects, and I knew it wasn't the last few people left on the island. I just didn't know that it turned out to actually b-oh yeah, no spoilers. ;) I'm not exactly sure if I really like the explanation though. It seemed a little out there, but I didn't think it was terrible out there. It did make some morbid kind of sense, I guess.

Well, then. Here's my final rating of the book then: 9/10 (Yes, I'm still not exactly in love with mysteries. Stubborn ole me)

And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie (#1)

Pages: 1-108

Wow! I'm actually enjoying a mystery. It's a mystery to me (haha, ok that was a bad joke, I get it) how I've been reading for so long without ever picking up an Agatha Christie novel. I think that this one is very interesting, and I like the style of writing.

So, first off, I really like how it's switching between the different characters' perspectives. With 10 characters, it is a little confusing at first, but a little bit into the book, I had already caught on. With so many different perspectives, the plot really unfolds beautifully. We get a little bit of information revealed at a time, and it's a lot of fun to read.

Next, I do enjoy her writing style. It's easy to read, and a bit of a departure from the kind of language I encountered in The Paradiso and The Three Musketeers. It's much cleaner, and although I hesitate to say that it's modern, it is a bit more up to our time's way of speaking and writing. It's refreshing to read this type of style again, since Silver Phoenix seemed to be just a bit of a stand-in filler between the books I really wanted to read. Silver Phoenix was a bit of a train wreck from the beginning, so I didn't pay too much attention to the author's writing style. I admit that I kind of wanted it to just be over and read it for the story. I'm finding that this isn't the case for And Then There Were None at all. I'm really into the story, and although I do usually bow to the strain of the suspense, I'm doing alright so far!

I'm enjoying this novel, and can't wait to read more!

My rating of the book so far: 9.5/10 (I don't know, but I'm not sure if it's a perfect 10?)

And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie (Begin!)

And Then There Were None
by Agatha Christie

So, one of my goals this quarter is to to read a bit more mystery. If it isn't apparent already, I'm really into fantasy/sci-fi (so much that I was half-contemplating picking up this Star Wars novel I had before I remembered my goal). I honestly can't remember the last time I read a mystery novel. Well, that might be because I always cave in and take a peek (alright, maybe not just a peek) at the end. My willpower can't stand up to the suspense! Anyway, I decided the time for me to read a mystery is long overdue, and I've picked up And Then There Were None. I'm thinking it's a little hard to go wrong with such a famous mystery author (Agatha Christie!) and such a famous work of hers. Well then, let's see how it goes!