Laddertop 3

Laddertop 3: The Laddertop Series, Book 3 by Emily Janice Card and Orson Scott Card

Laddertop concludes with us discovering that there are "noble colonists" come to inhabit the earth. They are sending a giant colonizing mission that will involve wiping out humans and making earth fit for themselves. A few of the aliens have sympathy for the humans and hatch a plan to preserve them. They planted the laddertops and gave them the technology. The plan was to send a small group of humans off to another planet so that they could continue their society there. This would involve the destruction of the rest of humanity. However, this is better than complete annihilation. Nevertheless, humans are not fond of that. They discover a way to work together and use the technology to wipe out the colonization ship. They also communicate with some of the kind aliens and decide to work together It seems like an interesting parallel to colonial endeavors. What if a few Europeans had helped the Native Americans to use gunpowder to destroy European ships and then worked together to share technology? Well, disease would have still wiped out most of the native population. Fiction has the ability to ignore those messy details.

The Last Shadow

I had gone through most of the original Ender's Game series pretty close together. I wasn't super engaged with the first book, but I really liked were things went with the end and into the other books in the series. The post-formic wars exploration of the universe made for great stories. I also enjoyed the Ender's Shadow. Recently, I've listened to the new Formic Wars novels. However, it has been a while since I've listened to the core series. These events were not very familiar to me. I had some trouble getting engaged with this novel.

In this book, humanity, despite being spread across multiple planets, finds itself in danger of extinction. There is a virus that can do bad things. The progeny of the original heroes are here to save humanity. A computer version of the former battle school leader is also here to help. They travel to a planet with sentient birds and underground humans. Eventually they discover more about the virus and with the help of the hive queen's slugs, are able to recover from it. 

I had trouble getting engaged with how all the plot points tied together. On one hand, it was said to be something of universal importance. But on the other hand, there only seemed to be a small number of people that cared about what was going on. I was most interested in the relationship with the different sentient beings on the planet that they were visiting. My favorite part of the book was Card's afterward. I love his behind the scenes look at how and why he wrote it and what interested him. The audio production of the audiobook was also excellent.