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?

  • MrSquicky@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    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.

    • EuSouUmAnjo@alien.topBEnglish
      1·
      10 months ago

      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.

    • lurfdurf@alien.topBEnglish
      1·
      10 months ago

      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.