Children of the Mind opens on the Chinese planet Path, where a mysterious, somewhat angry young fellow calling himself Peter Wiggin steps out of a spaceship that seemed to have materialized out of thin air and whisks a girl named Si Wang-Mu away. He explains to her that he isn't the real Peter Wiggin -who was the ruler of Earth three thousand years ago- but rather a child straight out of the mind of the real Peter Wiggin's younger brother.
For thousands of years people have had to travel from planet to planet at the light speed limit. Relativity caused them to age less than those who hadn't gone at such a high speed, but this still meant that a voyage from planet to planet essentially cut one off from friends and family who didn't go on the trip, causing them to be either very old or dead when one arrived at the planet to which they were traveling. This is how Peter’s brother from thousands of years ago had lived so long, as to now create Peter II.
For the newly-discovered way to abolish the light-speed law, which is how Peter arrived at Path, had its own side-affect. This method required going outside of the physical universe itself, where time and space did not exist, to jump back at any point else in the universe. The lack of laws of physics made any human imagining come true. Ender Wiggin had subconsciously imagined younger versions of his siblings from thousands of years ago, and they had sprung full form from his head, his own children of the mind.
Peter further explains that he needed Si Wang-Mu, who, being from the planet Path, where children were raised to be especially brilliant, to help him. The International Fleet was sending ships to destroy the planet Lusitania, which allegedly housed a deadly virus known as the Descolada (Portuguese for ungluing) that “unglued,” as it were, the very foundations of DNA itself, causing horrible mutations and painful death. In reality, the problem of the Descolada had been solved by imagining an antidote for it in Outspace, but there was no way for the International Fleet to know this because Lusitania wasn’t on the friendliest terms with them because of the way it handled the relations with its native life. Peter needed Wang-Mu to help him stop the destruction of an entire planet.
They arrive instantly at the planet Kamikaze, whose Kyoto-spirit philosophers heavily influence the I.F.’s policies. Peter needs Wang-Mu’s knowledge of the careful balance of the Oriental concepts of honor and dishonor into tricking one of the philosophers into revealing from where he gets his influences. Over an episode of power-play which Peter does not understand at all, he slips up, revealing himself to be a follower of the Ua Lava philosophy of the planet Pacifica. Or, at least, implies it.
The final connection from him to the philosophy is made by the hyper intelligent Jane, who controls faster-than-light travel, and whose communication jewel Peter wears in his ear. Jane is much more than a computer program: she is actually a soul, or Aìua, whose body is the computer network between worlds. But the I.F. is on to her, and is beginning to shut all of the linked computers down, world by world. She is losing processing power, which she needs to hold the information of whatever she is sending to Outspace together. Faster-than-light travel will soon be ended, and without this, Lusitania is doomed to be destroyed.
So it is hurriedly that she sends Peter and Wang-Mu to Pacifica, and also hurriedly that she sends Ender’s other mind-child, Valentine, and Ender’s adopted son, Miro, to scout for planets to which the Lusitanians could escape before their planet is destroyed, even though all the hurrying is bad for Ender’s Aìua. Having one’s soul split into three- one part for yourself, and one for each of your two mind-children- strains it. On the planet Lusitania, Ender lapses into a coma.
Valentine and Miro realize that there are enough planets to which the Lusitanians can flee, and realize that that isn’t their real assignment: they are searching for the planet of the alien species that created the Descolada.
On the planet Pacifica, Peter curls up into a ball in the sand as the jewel in his ear goes dead, and Jane dies. Orbiting around a sinister planet, with limited air supply and hostile aliens surrounding, Valentine, Miro, and other scientists are trapped, with no way out…
And the I.F.’s ships will soon arrive at Lusitania…
I’m going to end the plot summary section there. I am supposed to give the reader an incentive to read the book, aren't I?
I say that this was an amazing book, full of vivid detail and memorable, realistic characters. And the plot I’m giving isn't even the half of the thoroughly amazing universe presented to us between the covers of that book. I’m completely skipping out of the complex interrelationships the characters share. I’m not even mentioning the real Valentine, or Ender’s wife, Novinha, or Quara, or any of the Piggies, or Grace Drinker, or the Hive Queen, or Plikt, or the Fathertrees, or… etc, etc.
And yet I could. Each of these characters stands out vividly in my mind. I could tell you about Novinha’s tendency to blame herself for anyone’s death, even if she had nothing to do with it. I could tell you how spiteful and arrogant Quara is, or the Hive Queen’s lack of fear of death, or the way Grace Drinker’s husband makes jokes when he is trying to keep himself from going crazy and killing someone.
I could tell you about how much it hurt Miro to say mean things to Valentine when the situation forced him into it, or Peter’s evolution as a character, from being just the embodiment of a bad childhood memory Ender had of him to the young man who saved an entire planet by averting the Fleet’s ships.
In fact, I think that character is what moves the entire plot. Sure, there’s a little action, a little romance, a little humor, and a lot of suspense, but without characters those things couldn’t be there.
Although this book is actually forth and last in the Ender’s Quartet series, which began with science fiction classic Ender’s Game, I think that Card is a deft enough characterizer and plotter to make the complex plot and relationship issues understandable, making it possible to jump right into the book.
It’s still somewhat bittersweet to leave Ender’s universe behind, though. Luckily there’s also the Shadow Quartet, which chronicles the wars and political power struggle before the original, real Peter Wiggin came to power as ruler of the Hegemony of Earth. But those books have a much different feel than these ones. And then there’s always Ender’s Game itself, which is infinitely reread-able.
If you enjoy epic tales, philosophy, science, science fiction, good characterization, Portuguese culture, Japanese culture, Chinese culture, Icelandic culture, and metaphysics, then this book would be bizarrely, creepily suited for you.
If you enjoy a darn good yarn, then this book is good for that too.
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