Avi

This book was a major genre shift from book one. I can't wait to see how things move/change in the next book. While the first book was kinda about eliminating aliens, this one was about embracing them ‘cos we misunderstood them. This is one of the rare cases where the sequel is actually better than the first book. 

We all have those moments when we are by ourselves and the perfect response to the conversation we had three days ago occurs to us. Ender is the guy who does not need those three days to come up with the perfect response. While I was impressed by Ender's tactical genius in the first book, he blew me away with this diplomatic genius in this one. 

Looking forward to the third book to see the Hive queen back in action.

The biggest strength of this book is how short it is. It does not overstay its welcome. I have been a big fan of John C. Lennox ever since I started watching videos of his talks on YouTube. He just has this old manly wisdom, and this book is another nugget of it.   

I will reread this book again in the future some time.

This book is everything the childhood me fantasised about space fiction. 

Ender Wiggins is basically a powerful protagonist who never loses a fight. Despite the predictability this causes, Card does a great job of keeping him and the whole story interesting by focusing on the psychological suffering of Ender. The Wiggins siblings are an interesting set of characters. I wish there was more depth to Peter and Valentine's story. The side cast is well-rounded, too. Ender and Graff will stay with me for a long time. 

Card sets up the world neatly without much exposition. Because of this, it took me a while to get into the book, but once I did, I could not put it down and was absolutely intrigued till the end.  This is one of the rare books that I enjoyed the battle scenes in. 

I liked how Card kept the writing straight, simple and effortless. The Plot may be the only part of the book that I would not rate as high as the others. Many parts of the story felt predictable, but I'm willing to put them down to the book being out for more than 40 years. It is certainly possible that I've come across the plot points in various forms of media that have come out since then. 

The story felt well complete with everything neatly tied up. So, not sure what the sequels will contain, but I am certainly picking them up soon. I wish one of the sequels tells the whole story from a bugger's perspective. That should be interesting since the buggers do not have a concept of language.

The most impressive part was how readable the whole book was without pushing big words for the sake of pushing them. The author has done excellent research for this work. I'm intrigued to read more of his work now. I hear his fictional works are better than this.  

Of course, there are some plots which will never be resolved, as this is a real story and the people who can resolve them are no more.  For a book titled ‘Two Lives', it feels like it falls short because one of them takes most of the book, and unfortunately, it is the less interesting one. I can't blame the author for this, as he only began writing the memoir after his aunt passed away and could not get much of her story into it.  

This book felt like a letdown after Ender's game and Speaker for the Dead. 
I came for my boy, Ender and he is barely present in this story. It makes sense that he grew old, but I just wasn't ready for it going into this book. I liked Vaentine's character but not much of the other characters. I noticed towards the end of the book how OSC was writing Miro like he wrote Ender in Speaker for the Dead. I am interested to see how that goes in the next book.The plot was alright.  It is just so convenient these small group of people have the answers for all the problems of the universe. The writing felt a little too technical during certain chapters with all the science conversations going on. Nothing to get intrigued about the story within this book. However, I like how this(mostly Peter) sets the next book up and that is something I am looking forward to.