The Hive is the second book in the second Formic War series. This is yet another "Ender's Game" book. Card has really milked his seminal work for all it has. (Though it would be nice if he would actually finish some the series that he has left hanging, such as Alvin Maker.) There are a number of subplots floating around. There is the pirate who gets captured by the Formics and is then used as a science experiment. (I could just see this going bad.) There is the young married couple zipping off separately in space to help with the war effort. Then there are the military people. We have a lunar refugee crisis. And then there is bureaucratic incompetence. A central theme is that military and political people can be good, but most of them have their own motives that are not necessarily in the best interest of the organization as a whole. Chain of command can often separate those with needed information from those that act on it. The "hegemone" seemingly knows everything. He and his song both have the best interests of themselves and the world at heart, though they sometimes seem corrupt. They also seem to magically know exactly how things are going on. The "good guys" always seem to have just a little more brains and intuition than would be humanly possible. The book also devolves at times into long political episodes before picking up again. It wraps up a lot of the key plot points, but leaves open plenty more for the next book.
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