TL;DR Good setting, good plot opportunities, most of which are kind of ruined by Ender being a superhero.

Read this a few years after reading Enders Game, because people telling me I really needed to read it. It was okay, but it falls into the trap that always seems to happen after a writer creates a Hero that has succeeded over their first big adversity. We always get this superman character that can do no wrong - in this case Ender.

It had some interesting problems, like the fractured family Ender comes to speak for, but this isn't really explored as they that all instantly love him, rather him having to work for it. He leaves his sister at the beginning then at the end she just calls him up as if he hasn't been away for half her life. Even the alien little ones, rather than having Ender struggle to understand them, he instantly integrates into their society. Even have the possible exploration of the problems of love between an AI and Humans, with Ender and Jenny, reduces Jenny to a Deus Ex Machina.

On the other hand, the alien life cycles are quite interesting, the over-arching politics between the colony and the rest of the human populous are quite fun to see develop.