Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

Ender’s Game is an iconic science fiction novel that was both a flawed novel and a deeply compelling one. It is the story of Ender Wiggin, a child genius who is selected by the Earth’s military establishment as the person who is going to be the fleet commander to destroy the buggers—an alien race that has twice invaded Earth. After repelling them both times, they decide that they now need to attack them on their home planet, and Ender is the weapon they will use. Before that he goes through space academy.



This was a compelling and well written novel. Right from the jump I was gripped and I remained that way all the way through until the end. There is a timelessness about the story. It was well-crafted and intricate in its design. However, I had some issues with it that knocked it down a peg. For one thing, it suffered from one of the things that many young adult novels suffer from. In an effort to make it appealing to a young adult audience, the novel completely abandoned any sense of realism regarding what its main character was capable of doing. There’s no way the military apparatus of a planet would put the fate of humanity in the hands of a young child, especially the way they did it in this story. No child, even if he was a genius, would be capable of doing what Ender could do. The same holds true with Ender’s brother and sister. If you can get past the complete lack of reality associated with forcing this into a young adult novel, then you will probably enjoy this novel, since there was a lot to like.