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Book Review: Ender in Exile by Orson Scott Card
Ender in Exile tells a story of Ender Wiggin that takes place between chapters 14 and 15 of Ender's Game and concludes after Card's "Shadow" series but long before Speaker For the Dead. On the whole, I was glad to have read this, but my feelings are somewhat mixed.
So let's start with the criticisms first. At times, I feel like Card is too overbearing. The deep power of his books has always rested on his being a moral writing, but I've always felt that in his best work he's avoided being a moralizing writer. When he's exploring the moral issues at the heart of the human condition, he's at his best, even when his characters reach conclusions that I don't accept. When it feels like he's preaching, he comes across as patronizingly obnoxious. Likewise, one of Card's strengths--his insight into the human condition--can become a source of annoyance when he's too heavy-handed with it. At times, not just in the this novel, but much of his later work, I get the feeling that Card is showing off: he's drawn to characters who have a deep, penetrating intelligence and insight into the people around them, and this choice allows him to take a certain tendency to extremes, to the point where it feels like Card--or his focal characters, as it amounts to the same thing--are basically saying "Look at me and how smart I am and how well I understand people and societies and cultures."
Like any person, Card has certain lenses through which he sees, well, everything. He's intelligent enough that it's a pretty broad lens, and he's at his best when his lens is at its broadest, when he approaches that famous "negative capability" that we associate with Shakespeare. He's at his worst when he's stuck on some pet issue, like how most teachers are insecure hacks who are just trying to appear superior rather than teaching (especially when challenged by students who might be smarter than they are!) or issues of sexual morality. It's not that he hasn't created characters in whom these are legitimate, believable beliefs for them to hold: it's just that the only really good characters he seems to create are the ones who hold a certain set of opinions that are his (in this perception, I'm going by what I read in his columns).
Setting all that aside, there's a lot to enjoy in Ender in Exile. Card is still an excellent story-teller, quite good at his craft and drawing in the reader in a way that few other writers can match. He's still interested in important social and philosophical questions and tries to address many of them in the fullness of their complexity. Central among these, and surely inherent in the character of Ender Wiggin at this point in his life, are issues of moral responsibility, guilt, and accountability. Card here gets into very interesting, thoughtful distinctions as he explores how Ender can both be blameless for his acts and yet still responsible, right up to a fine line of guilt.
Likewise, Card does still have a profound sense of the issues of the human heart and often explores these masterfully. In fact, such an ability makes the clunkiness of his moralizing stand out in stark relief and seem all-the-more unfortunate: what a wonderful book this could have been, if only...
Still, I have no real regrets about the time I've spent in the worlds that Card has created, and leave them feeling that my time has been well spent and repaid.