Guilt Trip Through Time & Space

"Ender in Exile" - A Book Review

This book is a direct sequel to Orson Scott Card's original "Ender" book, "Ender's Game," and follows Andrew (Ender) Wiggen in the few years (relativistically speaking) following his defeat of the hive-minded alien race called formics.

The story is basically divided into three parts: Ender's trip to the first colony world, Shakespeare, which occupies one of the defeated formic planets; his brief time as governor on the colony where he finds the Hive Queen cocoon and is inspired to write "The Hive Queen" (which is where "Ender's Game" actually ends); and then his visit to Ganges colony. Most of the book therefore takes place between the last two chapters of "Ender's Game."

Summary

After Ender destroys the formics, he has nowhere to go. On Earth, he would become a pawn in a global power struggle as the American hero who saved the world; at the same time, every other country would have a target on his head. The solution is therefore to send him off to one of the colonies that will be based on one of the now-vacant formic planets.

While most of the colonists heading for Shakespeare are put in stasis for the two-year voyage at near light speed--forty years for everyone else--Ender, his sister Valentine, a small group of colonists and the ship's crew stay awake. Ender has been designated Shakespeare's governor but the admiral captaining the ship scoffs at the idea of a teenage governor and has plans for power. During the trip, a subtle power struggle between Ender and the admiral plays out; simultaneously, Ender is the object of a love interest that becomes a pawn in the power struggle.

Ender, clever kid that he is, finds a way to subordinate the admiral and take the governorship of Shakespeare as planned. Arrival on the planet means Ender can focus on his obsession of understanding the formics and why, he thinks, they let him wipe out their entire species. Shakespeare was one of their worlds, complete with biological and technological remains. This is basically the story of how, while surveying a site for a new colony, Ender discovers elements of the fantasy game he'd played in "Ender's Game," which leads him to finding the Hive Queen cocoon left behind. Upon finding the cocoon, Ender develops a telepathic link to the life inside and is able to finally understand the Hive Queens who led the formics. This inspires him to write "The Hive Queen," a story from the formics' perspective basically vindicating them in the war with humans.

Ender must now find a time and place to let the cocoon hatch so that the formics can live once again, but he decides he must wait until far in the future to do so. Too soon, and humans would just freak out again and wipe them out. To get there, he will travel around in stasis at relativistic speeds so that time passes dramatically but he ages little. Therefore, he and Valentine leave Shakespeare on a 20-year voyage (a year for them) to Ganges colony.

On Ganges, we start to see the wide-ranging effects of his book, "The Hive Queen," and how people are turning on Ender the Xenocide and sympathizing with the formics' extinction. Here, Ender confronts a rabble-rouser heading a sort of religion based on his books. The rabble-rouser wants to kill Ender, and in some ways Ender wants to let him for the guilt he still feels over the xenocide. This leads to the final revelation that Ender appears to have needed to go on with life: He doesn't want to die for what he did; he wants to live and still has a purpose. Thus he and Valentine fly off into the stars. For Ender, twenty years will pass; for everyone else, three-thousand years will go by before the book "Speaker for the Dead" takes place.

Review

With Ender, Card has created a poignant tragic character, a tragedy that ironically stems from Ender's refusal to be defeated. During the time frame of this book, Ender learns that he killed two children who had bullied and cornered him for a fight. Ender's response is always the same, what I have come to call "Ender's Gambit": Defeat the enemy so fully in the first move that there is never a second move. The same gambit wipes out the alien formic species completely, even when it seems Ender is about the be defeated.

In the war with the formics, Ender was used and led to believe he was simply playing a game. The realization that in winning the game he has really wiped out an entire civilization is an overwhelming blow to a 12-year-old boy. For the rest of his life, Ender will be filled with guilt and seeking redemption. Part of that stems from the fact that he always takes Sun Tzu's advice to heart, quite literally and completely: He comes to know his enemy so much that he loves his enemy.

Card, in my view, does an excellent job at portraying the type of war-torn, guilt-ridden spirit of someone who fights for his country, knows he has to, but cannot reconcile the horrors of war with a strong and fundamental goodness in his heart. Ender accepts the responsibility and the need to fight but is too deeply good to survive it without mental maiming. Just a child who will carry with him through life experiences no child should ever face.

The love for Ender that may have developed in "Ender's Game" and other books carries over into this one, but I doubt readers who pick this up as a stand-alone could appreciate it. I think knowing what he's been through helps to connect fully with his psychology in this book, namely his guilt and his obsession with the formics.

This book feels like a nexus of the Ender books in some ways, since its plot, stretched over 60 years of real time (though Ender only experiences 3), is simultaneous with the entire "Shadow" series which follows the events on Earth with Bean and Ender's brother, Peter. Readers of all the books will appreciate the tie-ins, mostly through email exchanges received via ansible. (There's a sub-plot in which Ender's parents want him to write (after 46 years separated--they elderly and he still little older), but he can't get himself to do it for fear of what they think of him; when he finally does, I find it a very touching letter.) Again, those just picking this book up could be thoroughly confused by the emails that sometimes seem discordant with the plot. This makes it rather realistic, though, since over the course of this 3-year plot, 60 years of plot are racing by in normal time.

Something of Card's writing that has impressed me is his ability to dip back into "old" plots and dig out new and intriguing stories. He did this with "Ender's Shadow," going back to the same time-line as "Ender's Game" but from Bean's perspective. Amazingly, it is not a bit repetitive, the plot stands out as unique, and fans will love being able to go back again with a whole new plot. This book is similar, taking place literally between chapters of "Ender's Game." And yet, there is a complete, fascinating, and moving plot between those pages.

Of course, Card could write a book for every stop Ender makes in his next 20 (3,000) years and I'd read it because he has created characters that are easy to fall in love with and he never fails to tell a captivating story.

Bottom line, if you haven't read "Ender's Game" please do so at your earliest convenience, and if you don't love it, there is something wrong with you. Or, at the very least, you don't share my "no-one-loves-me" fear of abandonment issues that makes these books resound with me.