Xenocide: volume three of the ender quintet

The war for survival of the planet Lusitania will be fought in the hearts of a child named Gloriously Bright.

On Lusitania, Ender found a world where humans and pequininos and the Hive Queen could all live together; where three very different intelligent species could find common ground at last. Or so he thought.

Lusitania also harbors the descolada, a virus that kills all humans it infects, but which the pequininos require in order to become adults. The Startways Congress so fears the effects of the descolada, should it escape from Lusitania, that they have ordered eh destruction of the entire planet, and all who live there. The Fleet is on its way, a second xenocide seems inevitble.

New York Times Book Review

Knowledge of what happened in the first two novels is essential to understanding this sequel. In fact, the three books form one long tale in which characters and concepts grow and deepen. Despite the epic confrontations called for in the plot, very little actually happens. The real action is philosophical: long, passionate debates about ends and means among people who are fully aware that they may be deciding the fate of entire species, entire worlds. Inevitably there are slow patches. . . . In the right hands, science fiction is afine medium for philosophical speculation; its imaginative worlds offer endlessly flexible settings for the statement of these and for their illustration and development. Mr. Card might have been wiser to compress his argument into a single book. But those who choose to follow him from start to finish will find that a novel of ideas can also be a novel of suspense.