Shadows in Flight, or OSC writes embarrassingly bad fanfic of himself
3/5. And this is a pity 3. So remember how I was talking about how really good writers try new things? Card used to do this, but now he has become ... the antithesis of this; apparently he now has nothing better to do than to write increasingly irrelevant (and what's worse, boring) fanfic about minor characters from a spinoff of his most popular work. It's frankly quite surprising to me that the same man who wrote the brilliantly disturbing Ender's Game and the incredibly moving, thoughtful, and subtle Folk of the Fringe, not to mention the layered Memory of Earth series, is putting out this kind of shallow garbage.
I mean, I was expecting the terrible dialogue where all the characters come across as OSC clones. That's par for the course. (Although even there, you don't find this kind of dialogue in Fringe.) But this tale of Bean in space with his genius mutant kids fails not only on a tired-tropes-are-we-still-talking-about-this-why level but also on a basic writing level, which is really surprising to me because I've always relied on him to at least get that right. There are the infodumps that he doesn't even bother to disguise. There is his use of "osmote" as a verb (dear OSC, just because a word is in the dictionary does not mean that I will not roll my eyes at you hard if you decide to use it). There is the quote from Macbeth that he has to point out because apparently the reader is too stupid to do this herself. There's the part where a character is named "Ender" even though it should be obvious this is going to throw any of us who fondly remember Ender Wiggin -- which is all of us, otherwise we would not be reading this book at all -- right out of the story every time he comes up.
There is the basic characterization error where Bean's daughter ruminates, at one point, that it seems odd to think of females as brutal and violent. Um... who was your mom again? Could it have been Petra, who was one of the top soldiers in the world and fought in at least two fairly brutal conflicts? It's patronizing AND doesn't make sense, two for the price of one!
And then there's the part where the characters go on and on about how poor them, no one back on Earth remembers them and is working for a cure to their mutant gigantism, which, okay. And then, practically in the same breath, for no discernible reason i can think of, they mention how thanks to the miracles of compound interest and good investment they are swimming in money that they have nothing to buy with. It took me all of two seconds to solve their problem, and these geniuses don't think of it? Please.
And then the ending, which dropped my rating by an entire increment. The rage-inducing ending, in which the rest of Ender's Game that wasn't already retconned by the previous books is retconned. And this is the part of Ender's Game that is most deeply felt and most heartbreaking, at least for me, so I was really annoyed by this. Not just that, but the ending is not to tell Ender something that affects not just his entire life, but may potentially have a bearing on the rest of the human race -- if I read it correctly (I wasn't, I confess, paying full attention by this point) they could be dooming humanity by not telling. And the kids decide not to tell, which is fine, what do they care, but then Bean is all, OK kids, knock yourselves out! ...WHAT.
There are some good things about it. Every so often you get a glimpse of that Card empathy, where a character who is presented at first as unlike able, even unredeemable, is shown to be sympathetic. And when I say this is a pity 3, well, the whole book is about a guy who is at the end of his life, who has to believe that something of himself will go on and that he hasn't failed in the great work of his life. And Card recently had a fairly serious heart attack. So, I mean, I think this was a book he needed to write, and that maybe he didn't think he had time to really do it justice, and I get that. I understand that things come to writers and they have to put them down. But I do not think this is a book you necessarily have to read, unless like me you are an OSC addict.
And even then, I swear to you, if he writes a book about Bean's grandchildren, I am not going to read it. Even I have my limits.
I mean, I was expecting the terrible dialogue where all the characters come across as OSC clones. That's par for the course. (Although even there, you don't find this kind of dialogue in Fringe.) But this tale of Bean in space with his genius mutant kids fails not only on a tired-tropes-are-we-still-talking-about-this-why level but also on a basic writing level, which is really surprising to me because I've always relied on him to at least get that right. There are the infodumps that he doesn't even bother to disguise. There is his use of "osmote" as a verb (dear OSC, just because a word is in the dictionary does not mean that I will not roll my eyes at you hard if you decide to use it). There is the quote from Macbeth that he has to point out because apparently the reader is too stupid to do this herself. There's the part where a character is named "Ender" even though it should be obvious this is going to throw any of us who fondly remember Ender Wiggin -- which is all of us, otherwise we would not be reading this book at all -- right out of the story every time he comes up.
There is the basic characterization error where Bean's daughter ruminates, at one point, that it seems odd to think of females as brutal and violent. Um... who was your mom again? Could it have been Petra, who was one of the top soldiers in the world and fought in at least two fairly brutal conflicts? It's patronizing AND doesn't make sense, two for the price of one!
And then there's the part where the characters go on and on about how poor them, no one back on Earth remembers them and is working for a cure to their mutant gigantism, which, okay. And then, practically in the same breath, for no discernible reason i can think of, they mention how thanks to the miracles of compound interest and good investment they are swimming in money that they have nothing to buy with. It took me all of two seconds to solve their problem, and these geniuses don't think of it? Please.
And then the ending, which dropped my rating by an entire increment. The rage-inducing ending, in which the rest of Ender's Game that wasn't already retconned by the previous books is retconned. And this is the part of Ender's Game that is most deeply felt and most heartbreaking, at least for me, so I was really annoyed by this. Not just that, but the ending is not to tell Ender something that affects not just his entire life, but may potentially have a bearing on the rest of the human race -- if I read it correctly (I wasn't, I confess, paying full attention by this point) they could be dooming humanity by not telling. And the kids decide not to tell, which is fine, what do they care, but then Bean is all, OK kids, knock yourselves out! ...WHAT.
There are some good things about it. Every so often you get a glimpse of that Card empathy, where a character who is presented at first as unlike able, even unredeemable, is shown to be sympathetic. And when I say this is a pity 3, well, the whole book is about a guy who is at the end of his life, who has to believe that something of himself will go on and that he hasn't failed in the great work of his life. And Card recently had a fairly serious heart attack. So, I mean, I think this was a book he needed to write, and that maybe he didn't think he had time to really do it justice, and I get that. I understand that things come to writers and they have to put them down. But I do not think this is a book you necessarily have to read, unless like me you are an OSC addict.
And even then, I swear to you, if he writes a book about Bean's grandchildren, I am not going to read it. Even I have my limits.