Goodreads | Ender's Game (Ender's Game series, Book 1)

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Shannon rated it:

(review of isbn 0812550706)

05/10/08

bookshelves: 2008, sci-fi

Read in May, 2008

I rarely really enjoy reading science fiction (the movies are another matter), but - most likely because of the refreshingly unpretentious and clear prose, which did take me by surprise - this book was almost a joy to read. I say "almost" purely because it's still science fiction, and for many reasons that are too long-winded to go into here, I prefer fantasy.

It's nice, though, to have Card (in his 1991 introduction) refer to this clarity of style, and actually encourage his reader...more

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Annalisa rated it:

(review of isbn 0812550706)

07/23/08

bookshelves: fantasy-sci-fi, guy-lit

Read in July, 2008

recommends it for: book club

Science fiction is not my thing. So it was with some trepidation that I opened my book club choice for the month, ready to endure another Stars Wars inspired knock off. And most of the book I had my head set on 3 stars, writing my review in the back of my mind: sure the story was interesting because it's about the psychology of child manipulation but the battle games lost me, both in interest and sometimes even understanding. It's sci fi. I liked the filler but not the meat. But then I finished ...more

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Christy rated it:

(review of isbn 0812550706)

08/12/08

bookshelves: readinglist2--sf, science-fiction-and-fantasy

Read in August, 2008

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

A story about the military training of a young boy (from the age of 6), I wasn't sure I'd like Ender's Game. It begins in the vein of Robert Heinlein's Puppet Masters--a story of military action and the sacrifices that are necessary in order to triumph--and seems to justify the attitude that individual humans are meaningless in comparison to the species as a whole and that violence is a legitimate way of life. One of Ender's teachers tells him early on that "Human beings are...more

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Charly rated it:

(review of isbn 0812513495)

08/25/07

Read in January, 2007

Spoiler Alert***

God damn did I hate Ender’s Game. I checked out Amazon and can surely see why I wanted to give it a shot. Talk about a cult following of people absolutely smitten with it. I even read some where that it’s on the required reading list at Quantico. I suppose this book could be some kind of manifesto for misfit nerds who waste their life playing video games or a source of legitimacy for motivating tired Marines sick of drilling (The book rambles on infinitely about the boy g...more Spoiler Alert***

God damn did I hate Ender’s Game. I checked out Amazon and can surely see why I wanted to give it a shot. Talk about a cult following of people absolutely smitten with it. I even read some where that it’s on the required reading list at Quantico. I suppose this book could be some kind of manifesto for misfit nerds who waste their life playing video games or a source of legitimacy for motivating tired Marines sick of drilling (The book rambles on infinitely about the boy genius Ender and his laser tag in a zero gravity vacuum.) I also suppose we could kid ourselves into thinking the novel brings to light the necessity of Machiavellianism in conflict or maybe we could discuss the pathetic New Age garbage the book ended with as our annoying protagonist spreads some half crocked neo-religion amongst space colonies in which you love the enemy you are forced to annihilate. Some sort of cryptic Latter Day Saints plug by the Mormon author?

There were several other things I couldn’t stand about it. First of all, like even the best science fiction, the characters were one dimensional card board cut outs. This starts with the dorky, self absorbed protagonist Ender himself. I can deal with this problem if the plot is cool enough (ala Dune). Dune, too, often times dealt with children geniuses, however it was explained and made sense in the story. We have no idea why Ender and the other children (of which 99.9% were male) are so smart. Speaking of children, did any of you guys pick up any sort of creepy pedophile vibe in this book? How many times were we told of naked little boys? Why were there references to their tiny patches of pubic hair? Why did Ender have to have his big fight naked while lathered with soap in the shower? And the corny Ebonics that the children randomly spoke in? WTF?

The third rate and minuscule insight we were given about the geopolitical conditions on Earth were terribly dated. The Warsaw Pact dominated by Russia? What a cheap rip of Orwell. Lame! The side story about Ender’s genius two siblings also using Machiavellian tactics to achieve their political goals (instead of Ender’s military ones) by blogging on the internet really didn’t add up to beans in plot development if you ask me. Of course, Ender is never beaten at anything he does. I suppose we are to be awed by his victories but, strangely, his greatest triumph was his stoic willingness to use some sort of super weapon to destroy an enemy wholesale via exploding an entire planet. On the cover of my book, it suggests this book is appropriate for 10 year olds. What could a child get out this book? Boo to Ender’s Game!!!!!
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Alexander rated it:

(review of isbn 0812550706)

01/11/08

Read in January, 2008

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

Last year, I had a student who was so trenchantly unteachable that sometimes after reading his science fiction novel manuscript, I would be prostrate on the floor of my office. I would look at the carpet and think, it's so soft, isn't it? And then lay myself down and wait until I felt calm, and then get up. Ender's Game is one of his favorite novels.

Reading it now, it's clear that part of why he would never listen to me was built into this novel's ethos---adults are evil but teachers especi...more Last year, I had a student who was so trenchantly unteachable that sometimes after reading his science fiction novel manuscript, I would be prostrate on the floor of my office. I would look at the carpet and think, it's so soft, isn't it? And then lay myself down and wait until I felt calm, and then get up. Ender's Game is one of his favorite novels.

Reading it now, it's clear that part of why he would never listen to me was built into this novel's ethos---adults are evil but teachers especially. But then so are children, but children are excellent? And so they are needed? In any case, the thing no one prepared me for was the bizarre homoerotic subtext built into the book as well, that is sometimes just a plain old supertext, on display. Or how women in this novel are to be loved distantly and kept from real knowledge, and turned against themselves, so they can then be used to compel others.

Also, the writing is terrible---far too much happens internally, and one of the most interesting events of the book is nearly buried and the presentation of it is rushed, because it is near the end. For a convincing child soldier, I recommend Chris Abani's novella, Song For Night, of a child soldier in Africa whose throat has been cut so he can't scream and distract his fellow soldiers. There are many points in the battle scenes where it is impossible to understand what's happening. I have to say, my unteachable student did write better battle scenes than this, and may yet have a future, if he'll ever listen to someone tell him that his writing isn't intelligible as a story. And the penultimate plot event, where it's revealed all of the games were not..games...could have been handled more interestingly. But the novel was overdetermined, as Charles Baxter says, and too many of the arrows point in the same direction. By the time Ender meets Mazer, his final teacher, my eyes rolled back into my head at the implausibility of it all. And it was another homoerotic moment as well: Spartan, through and through. But it only creeped me out, and I'm gay!

I'm also a former 'gifted child', and was tested and poked and pushed, all of these things, made to study computer programming when I didn't want to, and I made myself fail out of their program to get away from them. But I found no commonality with the gifted children here, not as I have in other stories about gifted children, say, like Salinger's Glass family. These kids aren't likable, really. They're all jerks.

I do hand it to Card for the ideas in the novel: blogging? Yes. It's in here, well before anyone was doing it, and it ...matters a lot, and in the ways blogging matters. Also the idea of an institution that runs on the manipulation of its populace into a distant war with an implacable foe, as a way of controlling people. And a society that has no privacy at all, not even in dreams. This novel does offer a dark picture of what life is like under these terms. Also, the idea of how a hive-mind would think differently, without language, and the complications of communicating with someone like that, that's brilliant also.

I wish it had been revised--that the battle scenes were clearer, that the movement of the novel's action, the way the 'buggers' are in a race to try and communicate with Ender before he kills them, that this were more obvious to the reader, and not a surprise whipped out at the end, so that it could have lent tension to the scenes of the games and manipulation, which were only boring. And Ender's decision, to be the Speaker for the Dead, that struck me cold, because in the end, the buggers were only trying to do what everyone else in his life were doing to him: poring over what makes him tick and trying to get him to do their bidding. I didn't see them as the innocent victims, at all.

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NESSA[♥] rated it:

(review of isbn 0812550706)

11/14/07

This book is mainly about a 6 year old boy named Ender Wiggin who is a third child in his family. In this book if your a third your really not wanted and people make fun of you.Familys are really only supposed to have two kids but the goverment let Ender's Parents have him. Ender has 1 brother and 1 sister both older than him. His brother Peter hated him because he had his monitor on for longer and because he was very smart and the goverment watched over him more. He always treated Ende...more
This book is mainly about a 6 year old boy named Ender Wiggin who is a third child in his family. In this book if your a third your really not wanted and people make fun of you.Familys are really only supposed to have two kids but the goverment let Ender's Parents have him. Ender has 1 brother and 1 sister both older than him. His brother Peter hated him because he had his monitor on for longer and because he was very smart and the goverment watched over him more. He always treated Ender bad and always did bad things to him he would sometimes say that he was going to kill Ender but Peter really loved Ender deep down in side he just didnt relize it sometimes. Valentine was his sister. She was very nice to Ender and loved him alot. She always took care of him and would sometimes protect him from peter when she could. She and ender where the only ones that really knew how peter was because in the eyes of adults he was an inoccent boy.Ender only really loved his sister Valentine because she was the only one that seemed to really care about him.
Ender Wiggin had his monitor on until he was 6 years old and his brother and sister didn't have it as long as he did. The monitor he had on is something all kids get when they are born. That way the goverment or secret people could watch and observe everything they did. They could see and hear everything that the person with the monitor had on. The goverment watched very careful on Ender because they saw how hard working he was and how smart he was. Sometimes in school he wouldnt have to pay attention and when someone asked him a questions about what they where doing he knew the answe. Since Ender had the monitor on for longer the goverment or the people watching over him where like his guards they could see if someone hit him or did anything bad to him its like if he had guards to keep him safe.
One day the goverment decided to take the monitor of the bakc of his neck to see if anything diffrent happened without it or how ender would react to not having anyone keeping him safe.Although Ender did not know the goverment was still watching him someway. Even though they couldnt keep him safe from harm they wanted to see what he would on his own without anyone with him. That chance soon came as soon as the monitor was of he went to school and there was a boy named stilson that did not like Ender but couldnt show it because he knew Ender had his monitor on. But when everyone including stilson he hda a bandaid in the back of his neck they knew they had taken Enders monitor of. Stilson took all his boys and followed Ender and started to tell him many things like that he was a normal kid and that he wasnt special anymore and how no one was there to watch him or take care of him. SUddenly there was a fight Stilson and Ender got in a fight Stilson first beat up Ender badly but Ender knew he had to fight back or they would keep messing with him so he did. ENder fought back with stilson and beat him up badly when stilson was on the floor Ender kicked which is something you ar enot supposed to do.
Since the giverment saw what had happened they knew Ender would be the boy that if trained and learned more would be a great leader so they sent him to the moon. That is where the soilders are and they prepare and see who will be one of soilders who will help protect earth from the buggers. So Ender went to the moon and learned more and more everyday of how to beat the buggers he also got steronger and stornger everyday until he was put to lead a group of soilders. The goverment wanted to see how well Ender worked if he had something to lead and he did he worked very strong to make his team strong for battles. At first when ENder got to the moon he wasnt very well known but now evryone knows him he might even be better then any other soilder that has ever proved to be the best.
I really enjoyed Ender's Game it is a very good book.

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Martine rated it:

(review of isbn 0812550706)

07/16/08

bookshelves: film, modern-fiction, north-american, psychological-drama, science-fiction

Read in June, 2002

Every now and then you come across a book whose prose is thoroughly unimpressive but whose premise and sheer bravado manage to suck you in nonetheless, to the point where you end up enjoying it an awful lot. Ender's Game falls into that category for me. The first few chapters feature some of the choppiest prose I've come across in a published book -- sentences so short and dull that I seriously wondered how the book had ever got published. However, the writing gradually gets better, and a...more Every now and then you come across a book whose prose is thoroughly unimpressive but whose premise and sheer bravado manage to suck you in nonetheless, to the point where you end up enjoying it an awful lot. Ender's Game falls into that category for me. The first few chapters feature some of the choppiest prose I've come across in a published book -- sentences so short and dull that I seriously wondered how the book had ever got published. However, the writing gradually gets better, and as for the story itself, well, it's simply compelling. It kept me up for the better part of two nights and had me doing some serious thinking afterwards. Not bad for a young-adult-cum-science-fiction novel.

Ender's Game centres on Andrew 'Ender' Wiggin, a precocious six-year-old who is selected for the inter-planetary Battle School, where children are trained to become commanders for the International Fleet (a space agency which is supposed to keep alien threats at bay). Ender's teachers suspect he is a strategic genius, so in order to nurture his talent and see what he is capable of, they subject him to an increasingly gruelling training programme in which he has to lead much older kids into mock battles. It soon becomes apparent why: the teachers believe that Ender may be the only person capable of beating the Buggers, a technologically advanced race from outer space who may or may not have evil designs on planet Earth. So they push young Ender to his very limits, only to realise much later that they may have pushed him too far. Is Ender up to the challenge? And what exactly does this challenge entail, and what does it mean in terms of right and wrong? These are just some of the questions raised in Ender's Game, a page-turner if ever I read one. While overall characterisation is shoddy (Ender himself remains a two-dimensional character, and the other characters never make it past 1.4-dimensional), there can be no doubt that Ender is a great protagonist. It's simply riveting to watch him overcome his own fears, outwit his enemies, win the respect and support of those who matter and prove himself worthy of the big task ahead of him. Reading about his game tactics is like watching a strategy book come to life, and I for one really enjoyed that experience (I guess I should be reading Machiavelli and Sun Tzu next). But Ender's Game is more than an exciting tale about a child prodigy overcoming tremendous odds to find the meaning of his life. It also deals with fairly fundamental ethical issues. Once the final battle is over, you are left with a lot of questions -- about the legitimacy of manipulation and using children as a means to an end, and about the ethics of war and colonisation. You are given an insight into how lonely life can be at the top, and how hard it can be to live with yourself after you've done something terrible (even if you were tricked into doing it). You are left feeling not just for Ender, who pays a heavy price for the games others play on him, but for his victims, who may not quite deserve the treatment they get. So what if the writing is sketchy and the characters are cardboard cut-outs? It's still a gripping read which makes some worthy points. A deserved classic, in my opinion....less

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Alana rated it:

(review of isbn 0812550706)

07/31/07

bookshelves: awful, sci-fi

First of all: Don't read the introduction. Please, God. It'll put you off the book for sure.
First he feels it necessary to rant about Fantasy and how derivative it is compared to Science Fiction *angelic chorus*.

THEN he barely conceals his self-congratulation on having written a 'clear' book and goes on for quite some time about people who build their careers on books too abstruse for the public to understand. Ummm, issues much? Because I don't know of anyone with a truly successful caree...more First of all: Don't read the introduction. Please, God. It'll put you off the book for sure.
First he feels it necessary to rant about Fantasy and how derivative it is compared to Science Fiction *angelic chorus*.

THEN he barely conceals his self-congratulation on having written a 'clear' book and goes on for quite some time about people who build their careers on books too abstruse for the public to understand. Ummm, issues much? Because I don't know of anyone with a truly successful career whose books are incomprehensible to the general public...because then people don't BUY them. And if you don't SELL books because people can't READ them, you don't HAVE a career even if you do get prize after prize. So get a grip and try to contain your prize envy, Mr. Card. You don't have to knock them because you write differently.

THEN he goes on for quite some time about how you must either LOVE or HATE the book, and how this clearly must mean that it MEANS something. Perhaps I'm simply the exception here (and considering how many of my friends are obsessed with this book, I suppose I am) but I don't feel either of those emotions. I'm simply not impressed. And I will explain why:
there's his self-congratulatory rambling about how he's written THE book regarding gifted children. How well he's captured them all. He hasn't.

I have no problem with a child protagonist acting and thinking very much like an adult, but Ender doesn't WORK as a character. He simply has no depth.

He's apparently infallible, omniscient. He has no real weakness. Everything is told so matter-of-factly. He shows absolutely no emotion. Ever. And the author does nothing to show his inner turmoil (something that might have truly been interesting).

He's so obviously destined to be THE ONE that there isn't (in my mind) a moment of real worry or fear that he will lose. That everything will have been for nothing.

Are we truly supposed to believe that in all of the potential of humanity, they are incapable of finding a competent and unconventional general outside the ranks of preschool?...less

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Matt rated it:

(review of isbn 0812550706)

01/31/08

recommends it for: everyone -- i'll even buy you a copy!

i think 'ender's game' is the only book i've read three times. for me books often don't have repeat reading value in the same way some movies have repeat viewing value. it's probably because a movie takes two hours of your time while a novel, for me, takes a week or longer. so for someone like to me read a novel twice, not to mention three times, is really saying something [and yes, i realize the inherent snobbery in that statement].

i've thought long and hard about what makes 'ender's game...more i think 'ender's game' is the only book i've read three times. for me books often don't have repeat reading value in the same way some movies have repeat viewing value. it's probably because a movie takes two hours of your time while a novel, for me, takes a week or longer. so for someone like to me read a novel twice, not to mention three times, is really saying something [and yes, i realize the inherent snobbery in that statement].

i've thought long and hard about what makes 'ender's game' so appealing. it's got a sympathetic protagonist, lots of great action, lots of heart, and a plausible twist of an ending. on those merits only 'ender's game' works. it's a lot of fun to read and orson scott card manages to inject some really moral and ethical quandries without resorting to didactism or heavy-handedness. for example, the manipulations of the battle school powers-that-be are presented and inspected, but card never explicitly paints them as the enemy. they are who they are, for better or for worse, but it's up to the reader to for his or her own opinions. same for ender and his merry band of castoffs. card understands that good v. bad is never as simple as black v. white. the world and universe are, more often than not, varying shades of gray. and the folks who inhabit that gray universe, for better or for worse, are who they are. they all have a part, they all have a purpose--even if those parts and purposes contradict each other.

'ender's game' is also a great story of the value and importance of friendship. i choke up everytime ender's friends great him over the headset and the kids prepare for the final 'battle.' who wouldn't want friends like bean, petra, hot soup and the rest? i sure would.

but i think the real appeal for 'ender's game' comes from the belief that we all want to believe that there's something uniquely special about us. i think it's safe to assume that most of us have, at one point or another, felt like the underdog, the castoff, the misfit, the misunderstood, or the underappreciated, and that if people would just give us a chance, we'd shine. in that way ender is very much a universal character. he embodies a small part of each ous. yes, he is treated unfairly and manipulated, but he's also the smartest kid in the room. there's something very appealing about that. at least there is for me. whether or not i'm the smartest person in the room is irrelevant, but i want to believe it. and whenever i read 'ender's game' there's a small hope that it just might be true....less

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Lindsay rated it:

(review of isbn 0812550706)

06/27/08

bookshelves: books-used-in-school, yalitapproximately

Read in June, 2008

recommends it for: folks curious about sci-fi

This is the assigned summer reading for a few of my upcoming high school classes--I probably would have never read it otherwise. I have always been reluctant when it comes to science fiction: for good or ill, I always made judgments that it all follows the same formula--it's always two extremes fighting the war of the worlds; even ordinary people are extraordinary; and aliens, aliens, aliens (as much of a fan of sci-fi TV & movies I was as a pre-teen, few depictions turn me off more now tha...more This is the assigned summer reading for a few of my upcoming high school classes--I probably would have never read it otherwise. I have always been reluctant when it comes to science fiction: for good or ill, I always made judgments that it all follows the same formula--it's always two extremes fighting the war of the worlds; even ordinary people are extraordinary; and aliens, aliens, aliens (as much of a fan of sci-fi TV & movies I was as a pre-teen, few depictions turn me off more now than someone trying to devise an alien race). I approached this book with the same trepidation. How wrong was I!
This is not to say my preconceptions were entirely false. Thank goodness there wasn't a plot blurb on the back of this book or else it would have been doomed for me. The only concise summary I can offer is this: It is some point in the perhaps-not-so-distant future, and 6-year-old Ender Wiggin, who already possesses a far superior intellectual ability than many adults, is chosen for Battle School to prepare against an impending Third Invasion from the buggers. He's pegged as the savior, he learns a lot about himself, yada yada. Lots of battles, space jargon, good versus evil. If I had read this, I never would have touched the book.
But of course it's more. I had to actively make myself give it a chance, and once I let go of my prejudices, I couldn't put the book down (figuratively speaking). What drew me in most was the strategy. Even when I couldn't quite follow some of the activites in the battleroom or the attempts to describe the technology, I was hooked by the characters' cunning and pathos for survival. Normally, I want to read about ordinary people who find the extraordinary in themselves, but Card reworked my expectations in this novel. I thought it would be hard to empathize with a character who was already above average (it took me a while to get past Ender's age), but something clicked at one point, though I can't explain exactly what triggered it.
Other thoughts:
-I was a little disturbed by some of the sexism although it kind of, awkwardly, redeemed itself a little by the end.
-I do not actively participate in guessing endings or events, but felt a little satisfaction in predicting a few of the surprises (only just before they were revealed, though). There was enough happening in the novel that I didn't get bored enough to start thinking ahead--every part of the plot was read very much in the moment.
-I felt a little bombarded by the amount of characters. I may have to go back and make a little outline of names and events since I'll be responsible for teaching the book.
-I enjoyed the 1-2 page intro to most of the chapters giving voice to various authorities (thus, a sort of omniscient character) and shedding a little light on what would be happening in the coming chapter. Very The Grapes of Wrath. Builds suspense.
I'm so glad that I had such a good experience with this book, a sci-fi book. Not only will I definitely read more Orson Scott Card in the future, but I am now more open to exploring more of the genre itself. It's important to me not only as a reader, but also as an educator so that I might be able to reach more students....less

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Ellie rated it:

05/10/07

Read in May, 2005

A really great book about Ender Wiggins, who is taken at the age of six to live in a military training institute where he is trained to be a great commander. He rises much more quickly than the average child because he is being groomed to be the commander of the entire international fleet against the buggers (what a horrible name Card picked for his aliens!). In the end he thinks he is still training but he’s really fighting the battle, and he destroys the entire bugger race. I kept thinking a...more A really great book about Ender Wiggins, who is taken at the age of six to live in a military training institute where he is trained to be a great commander. He rises much more quickly than the average child because he is being groomed to be the commander of the entire international fleet against the buggers (what a horrible name Card picked for his aliens!). In the end he thinks he is still training but he’s really fighting the battle, and he destroys the entire bugger race. I kept thinking about the issue of child soldiers in the world today. I think the psychological aspects of the book are very interesting, with the relationships between Ender and his siblings, Ender and the other children, Ender and the instructors, and Ender with himself. Some of Orson Scott Card's typical themes come through, but less so than in the other books and series I've read by him. And after the twist in the story, I was thinking to myself that it ought to have been predictable, but I was so caught up in the telling that I wasn't thinking ahead to predict. One thing that Card tends to do which I sort of don't like is at some point later on in a book when he wants to advance the story quite a bit he has the characters go through years and years of their lives without really saying much about them. So by the end of the book, Ender is what, 20? 21? and I still felt like he was 11. Actually quite a bit of the end felt like it had just been tacked on to the book and wasn’t nearly as good as the rest. I didn’t really like the bit where Ender was receiving psychic messages from the dead bugger queen, or that she had somehow gotten into his head and recreated parts of his dreams. And the computer program at the battle school that somehow got Peter’s picture and created new things just for Ender was never explained. In any case I think this is the best book by Card I’ve read so far, and I could even see myself re-reading it at some point. There’s a lot to think about in it, and it’s also an engrossing story. [It’s very unfortunate that Orson Scott Card, a writer with such great imagination and ability, also happens to be a crazy right-wing weirdo. It’s not just the Mormon preaching he does in his books, but apparently he also posts on right wing web sites all sorts of nonsense and rubbish, including stuff about John Kerry being hostile to the military that he posted prior to the election. I wish he wouldn’t use his books to promote his right wing ideals, but at least I can just read them for the stories and try to ignore the rest.]...less

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Keely rated it:

(review of isbn 0812550706)

08/31/07

bookshelves: novel, sci-fi

Read in October, 1998

I was savaged by a miniature poodle the other day--wait--no. Someone protested my review of The Giver the other day, and amongst a lot of Ad Hominem attacks, made the argument that children needed great books dumbed-down for them, and that The Giver is just an effective dumbing-down of 1984, Fahrenheit 451, Brave New World; what ...more

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Kyle rated it:

(review of isbn 0812550706)

03/11/08

Read in January, 1988

recommended to Kyle by: found by chance in a library when i was a kid
recommends it for: just about anyone

This has to be, hands down, one of the best science fiction books written. Ender's Game is set in a disarmingly straightfoward sci-fi setting: a near future earth threatened by a hostile alien species with superior technology that seems determined to destroy the human race. The story centers on a young boy who is drafted into an all-consuming military training program at the age of 6. The program he's inducted into seeks to forge a new generation of military commanders out of gifted chil...more This has to be, hands down, one of the best science fiction books written. Ender's Game is set in a disarmingly straightfoward sci-fi setting: a near future earth threatened by a hostile alien species with superior technology that seems determined to destroy the human race. The story centers on a young boy who is drafted into an all-consuming military training program at the age of 6. The program he's inducted into seeks to forge a new generation of military commanders out of gifted children, and it's sole purpose is to break them at any cost, until they finally discover someone who can't be broken. What follows is an emotionally complex and at times painfully familiar story of children struggling to accept their inner demons. Ender in particular is cursed with a brutal combination of profound empathy for others, and an overwhelming survival instinct that drives him to win no matter what the cost. It is this combination of gifts that may make him the commander the fleet needs in it's war against the alien invaders, but only if Ender can find a way to survive the burden of understanding his enemy so thoroughly that he can no longer see them as "the other," but as a reflection of himself.
The story is fast-paced, and Card's signature style of simple, plain language and streamlined descriptiveness serves to bring the characters front and center at all times. This book is infused with a very real sense of psychological and spiritual dislocation, and treats it's young protagonists as fully realized, intelligent, 3 dimensional characters struggling with very adult questions. Card's other signature: creating drama through ethical dilemmas, is also a central element of the story, and he does a very good job of challenging the reader to find some semblance of moral high ground anywhere. The conflicts between characters are made all the more powerful by the almost total lack of mystery: motivations and intent are laid out very clearly in most cases, and it is the reader's ability to empathize with everyone's point of view that makes the story less about winning and loosing and more about living with the consequences of either.
This book is thought provoking, emotionally complex, and ethically challenging. It's a powerful examination of conflict and violence, military necessity, family roles, and the ways in which we use the idea of "the other" to justify all manner of savagery.
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