I hadn't noticed that this was not a complete novel and would not have requested it if I had. But I'm glad I did and look forward to reading the complete book.

Think of CHILDREN OF THE FLEET as a revised, jacked-up version of ENDER'S GAME. Fraught with military political intrigue, kids who plot enigmatic schemes, and senior officers pretty much as adroit of human compassion and emotion as when you encountered them the first time, I'd say the only major differences in this new installment is Dabeet Ochoa, the teenage genius and strategist, and of course you get to hear about Ender Wiggin again.

The story starts off with Dabeet's retelling of Pinocchio in his own quirky way. This already gives us a pretty good idea of Dabeet's character. His was an interesting perspective to read from, seeing into the mind of a child genius. I had no trouble reading from the perspective of a 10 year old, which can be difficult to portray in such a way that it is not childish. 

Throughout the first chapters Dabeet is arrogant, although it is understandable, I found that he could annoy me at times. At the end of the 7 chapters of the preview we saw the start of a change in Dabeet and this showed me a lot of promise for the rest of the book.  We can never call Dabeet a normal child because his capacity to logically break down and understand the world around him is astounding to read.  Although I only read the preview I hope that the book is filled with excitement as the preview created a good start to the novel and left me wanting to continue with Dabeet on his journey. I was a little disappointing that we didn't get to any of the action earlier in the book. There are a couple of unanswered questions which I will just have to read the whole book to answer.

This preview leads me to believe that this novel will be as exciting and remarkable as the other novels in Ender's World. I'm looking forward to the release of "Children of the Fleet" so that I can find out more about Dabeet Ochoa's past as well as his future in Fleet School and beyond.

I'm not going to worry about spoilers here as this is only an excerpt. This excerpt seemed to be what I have come to expect from Card. His Ender's Game is one of my favorite books. The follow ups to it unfortunately start to stretch and I have never liked some of them. Though I think he will still always possess that home run power. This excerpt seems to fall more in line with his follow up books to me, however it borders a very similar parallel to Ender's original tale joining the fleet. It makes me hopeful it has more potential than just what I see in the excerpt. The biggest issue I have with the excerpt, and many of Card's follow up books, is that in his mastery of character development he goes too far with it too often. He takes you inside Dabeet's mind, which is great for character development, but when you get to the point you want to skip over Dabeet babbling to himself in his own mind, it has probably gone too far. There are pros and cons to that much in depth insight into a character's mind, but also I think card needs to do a better job of writing Dabeet's internal dialogue as consistent with his super intelligence. Dabeet seems to have a lot of self doubt which is an unlikely component for someone who is always one step ahead of everyone around him. The picture of the character ends up being inconsistent. Most everything in this excerpt ended up being somewhat relevant. The puppet thing seemed like a big left turn for a while, but it eventually came back around. That is something that I think you see a fair amount of in Card's books that can be a turn off, the shooting tangents that go very far out there at times. Often these tangents play back in just like the puppet, but like the internal dialogue it can easily be taken too far. I do like the in depth character development in general and I like the psychological development you see in many of his characters. I would rate the excerpt 3.5 stars with hopes that the book would delve into things I found more interesting, hoping the book would be something I could go 4 stars or above as I was in between 3.5-4 on the excerpt.

I have been a fan of Orson Scott Card since elementary school when I first read "Ender's Game." I've read all of the Ender series abs quite a few more of his novels so when I had the chance to preview the first seven chapters of this new series, you can bet I went for it. I wasn't disappointed. I do know that it usually takes a bit for the author to set up the story and to make you really care about the characters in it. Being only the first few chapters, you barely are starting to actually like Dabeet by the seventh chapter, and end of the excerpt. I have high hopes for the rest of the book though after reading and look forward to many more good novels from Mr. Card.

The preview excerpt makes you crave for more - here's hoping the whole novel delivers the goods, too!

I don't read previews. They drive me nuts! I didn't notice, or I wouldn't have requested.