This book continues on from 'Speaker From the Dead' and Andrew 'Ender' Wiggin's life on the Portuguese colony planet Lusitania, the home of only the second sentient species mankind has encountered, after the Buggers destroyed by Ender in the first book of the series, and a newly emerging colony of Buggers hatched from the Hive Queen transported through various worlds by Ender.

This book is more of a lengthy examination of various moral issues than an action packed SF adventure. The Human Starways Congress has sent a fleet of starships to destory the planet and wipe out the threat of the Descolada virus existing in all native life on the planet. This fleet has been stopped by 'Jane', a sentient computer based life living in the interplanetary network of computers. This disappearance being investigated by a young 'Godspoken' woman on the Chinese colony world Path seems likely to expose Jane's existence to the Congress.

The scientists on Lusitania must try to find a way of eliminating the threat of the virus on the planet without killing the native life which is totally dependent upon it's presence.

All of this sounds like a lot of action takes place in these 500+ pages. This is not the case. These pages contain a lot of discussions mostly of a moral nature about whether it is right to make some of the choices being faced. This does not make this a bad book, although it does not make it an easy one to read, I would never say this is a book that will drag you from cover to cover, it takes a good deal of effort to read this (not made easier when chapters are up to 80+ pages long). That said there is a lot to be gained from reading this book, and Card's writing style is such that the novel is readable despite it's heavy subject matter.

All in all, this is a good read, but not one if you a fan of militaristic SF.