My reader friends are to date all telling me to stop there because it's "bad" after. I don't know. I might try someday. Do you recommend them ?
Sorry for speaking when not asked, but coincidentally last month I decided to give
Xenocide amd
The Children of the Mind a try, after hugely enjoying the first two books and re-reading them for many times. I have been warned that it gets "curiouser and curiouser", but no warnings could prepare me for what a drag it turned out to be. I liked certain things,
like The World of Path, or Jane's character development, but it was all around exhausting. The two main problems I saw were a) the weird, weird plot twists and b) Card's philosophical worldview starts showing through in quite irritating manner. It's no even that I disagree with him (though yes, I do many times), but the charm of the writing style must have somehow worn off by book 3.
I'd still strongly recommend trying
Speaker of the Dead, I found it a very touching and engaging read.
I'm currently experiencing a reading equivalent of violent mood swings, going all the way from polish satire from the 60., through some pretty bad crime novels, all the way to Yeates or memoirs of concentration camp survivors.
The "pretty bad crime novels" in question are by a Slovakian author Dominik Dan, and I believe they haven't been translated into English. They are supposedly based on the author's experiences as a real-life detective, but well. The most known of the many, many books he's published includes
the Conspiracy of the Templars. Also, the dialogues sound forced and overwitted, and the plots are concerned mostly with the scandalous lifes of the Slovakian upper-class, or Catholic priests.
And still,
still, I've read four of the books already, it's so bad you are unable to stop. I desperately need to set my eyes on something actually enjoyable.