How did the author of such amazing books as Ender’s Game and associated books, the Homecoming saga, and Alvin Maker series end up such a boring, innate writer in his later years?
The book is 90% dialogue and when the climax of the book came, it was so uneventful that I was sure it wasn’t the real ending and that it would end as a cliffhanger instead.
Plus, giant questions that never got answered. >!Why was Ivy-O taking pieces of foliage? We get speculation but no answers. How was Laz able to replicate Ivy’s powers but not vice versa? Why did original Lazarus disappear? Where did the brain scans of them from their late teens come from, if neither remembers them?!<
I rarely reach the end of a book without finding something redemptive about it, no matter how small, but I was bored and hated it the whole time and found nothing to like.
Is there something I’m missing or misunderstanding? Did anyone like this book?
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You’re still reading his stuff? Don’t read anything he wrote after Empire. Hell don’t read Empire.
hes also a shitty dude!
He sucks 🤢
Wyrms is another awful book by him. Starts off as a Dune ripoff then turns into something else entirely. Received it as a joke present and forced myself to finish it as some kind of masochistic penance for an otherwise relatively trauma-free life.
It’s interesting to hear this about his latest work. He used to be one of my favorite authors, a “buy the hardcover, no hesitation” for each new book. Then I went to one of his book tours and he came across as an insufferable asshole. This was right before Phantom Menace was released and he was speculating that Jake Lloyd would make a good Ender Wiggin for the movie version of Ender’s Game. Funny how long it took to get that made.
I tried to keep reading his work but after a while I couldn’t separate the art from my opinion of the artist and gave up near the end of the Shadow Saga books when the story just got ridiculous. Guess I didn’t miss much.
He suffered a stroke in 2011. That’s the clear diving line for his writing quality. And his views getting so shitty. It seems like he wasn’t great with gay people before that, but the vehemence of his position there exploded after that.
Cuz the dude was prolific in his writing. Is every Stephen King novel a banger?
People just love to hate things. I’ve found it’s not worth discussing in threads like this
Is Wakers where the people are secret magic gods and if they go thru portals they double their powers?
nvm that was mithermages
There’s a pretty clear delineation in the quality of Card’s work. Around the Bush administration, he really lost his enjoyment of writing fiction and went full into angry old man mode and the quality of his work took a nose dive.
If you’re going to read him, use that dividing line. He was an amazing author who lost it but kept writing.
On a personal note, I don’t know for sure a lot of the story, but I regard Card as a tragedy. There’s been a lot of bad things in his life and I think his latter years are largely shaped by the pain and anger he bears, along with a pretty large dose of insecurity.
I get that he has made himself easy to hate and he definitely used his gifts to hurt others but I think if people really understood him, he’d be more an object of pity. Dude’s got some deep in the bone hurt in him.
He got more and more moralizing and his stories went more and more centered on portraying his moral and religious beliefs; the plots constricted around his need to preach, his characters ill-shaped, etc.
Even before Bush, when he went angry old man mode, the quality of his work was already declining.
Ender’s game was fantastic. The sequels were quite disappointing. and it’s true for most of his work, IMO. I used to like his books a lot ; now I’m just not interested.
There’s a pretty clear delineation in the quality of Card’s work. Around the Bush administration, he really lost his enjoyment of writing fiction and went full into angry old man mode and the quality of his work took a nose dive.
If you’re going to read him, use that dividing line. He was an amazing author who lost it but kept writing.
A key moment that contributed to that was probably the death of his 17-year-old son to cerebral palsy in 2000.