Ruins

Ruins starts out as a fantay book, then turns science fiction. It goes along nicely, builds up a nice storyline, and then ends randomly. It didn't wrap things up or have a cliffhanger. It just ended. Was he thinking to write another book in the series? Or is this how it ended? Card seems to be losing interest in his writing. He starts up a whole bunch of new series, but is not much in the whole "finishing" the existing ones that he left on a cliffhanger.

In Ruins we get a bizarre twist on time travel. People can travel back in time and see themselves. They can create multiple different paths for themsevles. Some of themselves can die without impacting the other selves. This "splitting" and "time travel" is how their world got created. 10,000 years prior a spaceship from earth landed on the planet. However, before landing, it traveled back 10,000 years and split in to 19. Thus, when the second ship comes a decade+ later, it has been more than 10,000 years, and in one time flow, they are shocked to see a huge civilization built up. (The time has been longer than the civilized time on earth.)

The different split up groups are kept separated via a wall. They also have "expendable" robots that help keep order in regenerate. In one "wall-fold", the people have a symbiotic organism that allows them live in the sea. In another, the people got to keep the smarts from earth. They have been monitoring "future" books that describe the destruction of the world, and have changed the world to avoid the cataclysm. In one case, they have bread themselves to appear to be yahoos that shun reproduction. However, they have also bred mice to have the intelligence of humans.

The main characters have abilities to view all paths traveled by living things, travel back in time, forward in time, and "fast through time".

There are all plenty of great ideas and interesting stories, but the ending just does not cut it.