The first read, I was very caught up in the zero gravity battle scenes and the computer game and the what's going to happen next. The second read, I was able to appreciate the greater context of the book in terms of military strategy and world political behavior. There is the hypothesis that if there is an alien enemy, all people on earth will pull together as one and fight the common enemy. Part of Ender's Game and highlighted by Ender's Shadow , deals with what happens right after you lose your common enemy. I am having a hard time writing about this book and the remainder in the series and believing that I can do justice to these books.
Card invents entire races and universes and the rules by which they are governed.
Between the science and the imagination, these books are terrific. Xenocide and Children of the Mind continue the story building and surprising us. Even the names of the books which seem so obvious while reading Speaker for the Dead , turn out to mean much more than I could have ever have guessed. I started my Dad on this series when he went into surgery. He said he didn't know whether he should thank me or curse me since he didn't want to do anything else but read.