Children of the Fleet
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4.0 • 47 Ratings
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
From Orson Scott Card, award-winning and bestselling author of Ender's Game, his first solo Enderverse novel in years.
Children of the Fleet is a new angle on Card’s bestselling series, telling the story of the Fleet in space, parallel to the story on Earth told in the Ender’s Shadow series.
Ender Wiggin won the Third Formic war, ending the alien threat to Earth. Afterwards, all the terraformed Formic worlds were open to settlement by humans, and the International Fleet became the arm of the Ministry of Colonization, run by Hirum Graff. MinCol now runs Fleet School on the old Battle School station, and still recruits very smart kids to train as leaders of colony ships, and colonies.
Dabeet Ochoa is a very smart kid. Top of his class in every school. But he doesn’t think he has a chance at Fleet School, because he has no connections to the Fleet. That he knows of. At least until the day that Colonel Graff arrives at his school for an interview.
THE ENDER UNIVERSE
Ender series
Ender’s Game / Speaker for the Dead / Xenocide / Children of the Mind / Ender in Exile / Children of the Fleet
Ender’s Shadow series
Ender’s Shadow / Shadow of the Hegemon / Shadow Puppets / Shadow of the Giant / Shadows in Flight
The First Formic War (with Aaron Johnston)
Earth Unaware / Earth Afire / Earth Awakens
The Second Formic War (with Aaron Johnston)
The Swarm / The Hive
Ender novellas
A War of Gifts / First Meetings
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Card returns to the universe of his legendary Ender saga with a novel whose unresolved intrigues hold forth the enticing prospect of future elaborations. The Formic Wars that shaped the plots of earlier novels in the series and made Ender Wiggin their reluctant hero have ended, and Earth now looks to change the mission of its International Fleet from combat training to colonization of the stars. Ten-year-old Dabeet Ochoa, an intellectually precocious and insufferably arrogant "child of the Fleet" whose father is probably a high-ranking officer, is admitted as a student to Fleet School. Before he can attend, he's kidnapped by desperate smugglers who threaten his mother's life and force Dabeet to join their plot to compromise the Fleet School space station. Card builds a suspenseful mood of paranoia as Dabeet goes through his early days of training, uncertain whether the smugglers' threat is sincere or just a ruse perpetrated by Fleet higher-ups to stimulate his skills at creative problem-solving. Card takes a risk by making his main character "an obnoxious little self-obsessed twit" (in Ender's words), but the social skills that Dabeet gradually and grudgingly develops set up a thrilling climax in the best space opera tradition and lay the groundwork for future chronicles. Series fans will enjoy this installment.
Customer Reviews
I liked it
Set in the familiar Ender universe, Orion Scott Card creates a stand alone novel that is fast paced and entertaining. I’m admittedly biased as I’ve read and enjoyed much of his work over his career, but this was a very good book that made me believe the characters, a story that engaged me and left me wanting more (in a good way).
This is a great read and I will undoubtedly reread it in the future, the fate of the best books that I buy. Card doesn’t seem to agonize over his writings, it just seems to flow, effortlessly, and yet I know that’s not how this works, but I’ll say his perceived comfort level is very high
Rehash of Ender’s Game, except bad
A few months back, this book was being advertised as a novel featuring the teachers and the Battle School. I was honestly excited— Graff, Dimak, and Anderson are some of my favorite characters.
Except this book has nothing to do with any of those characters. (I mean, Graff is here, but his character has somehow morphed into yet another unlikable, flashy smart-mouth, so, not really)
The book stars a genius prodigy child who gets into space school, and must fight through authority’s neglect and apathy for their work and their students. Sound familiar? That’s right, this is the same plot as Ender’s Game! Except the protagonist is completely unlikable, the environment is vague, the authorities have no actual reason to risk lives (besides their gambling issues, I suppose), and lots of plot holes so big I could fit my hand through them. It even has the same power-structure-lesson-in-an-airplane scene.
The “plot twist” near the end would fit better in a soap opera, and would take a thousand out-of-character moments to actually happen. Which doesn’t mean much, because all the characters’ personalities seem to be flexible anyways.
And if these things weren’t confusing enough, the actual character arc is shallow and lazy. It’s hard to believe that the protagonist has gotten over his narcissism when the entire plot actually DOES revolve around him. The only other use of characters is apparently to give him the occasional pep-talk. Hundreds of children and a billion dollar satellite is risked for, what, some sort of test of character? The last thirty or so pages is just shoving in your face how “heroic” this protagonist is. So much for learning to be humble.
Somewhere along the line, Card lost his respect for his audience. Or maybe just lost his editors. Not sure.
Mildly disappointed
Left much to be desired.
Made me sad as I’ve read many of his other books even outside of the Enders game universe and view them in high regard