xenocide by orson scott card is a very worthy successor to the first two books in the series, although it wasn’t quite as surprising as i found the first two books to be. the leap from ender’s game to speaker for the dead was much larger than from speaker to xenocide, but it definitely continues the progression into a more ensemble-driven, metaphysically-rooted story. one weakness is a few of the characters that are clearly just along for the ride into the next book in the series.

the hard part of reading the series is the fear that it is going to take a star wars-caliber dive off a cliff. all i can say for sure right now is that xenocide is no return of the jedi.