Children of the Mind

Orson Scott Card completes this complex saga by taking it from the tactical and emotional logic of its roots, to an all out orgasm of philosophical and metaphysical speculation. This does make things fun, but unlike the previous books where it was easy to follow where things where going due to Card's habit of hashing each tiny bit of logic out, here you have to swallow a lot of far-out concepts. I couldn't do that with all of this, so I felt a little less invested than I had in the past.

There's also the problem that after said orgasm, things dissolve into a whole lot of fluffy pillow talk. I know Card has never been exactly a gritty writer, I don't read his books for that, but the fact that things finish so damn prettily and the two major pairings wed with only sharing a single kiss respectively, just makes me want to roll my eyes. I think there is a reason why Card's most famous - and probably his best, though I haven't read anything else outside of the Ender series - book was about children.

So I'm pretty conflicted about this book. Parts I really enjoyed, others I really didn't. And as a whole it left me feeling kind of awkward.