Ender’s Game was originally written as a novella, then expanded as a novel to allow Orson Scott Card to introduce his Speaker of the Dead books. Ender Wiggin is a six year-old genius shipped off to Battle School, where he and other children are trained in anticipation for the next attack by aliens known as Buggers. Ender garners the attention of his new teachers quickly and soon outshines the other children in Battle School. Ender’s Game follows him as he moves up in Battle School and learns to be a young commander, with the action culminating at Ender’s tender age of twelve.
I made no secret that it was hard for me to finish Ender’s Game. I only picked up the book in the first place because of the upcoming movie, and I wanted to read the book before I were to go see the film (reading the book first, however late to the game I am, allows me to be unjustly upset when they change key plot points. I have faults. I know). The book sat unfinished on my iPod for several months, as I worked up the courage to continue with the onslaught of hopelessness and witnessing a young child beaten down by responsibilities far beyond his years.
I cannot deny that Orson Scott Card really is a masterful writer; you care about Ender and Valentine from the beginning, and you feel so against all that happens to both of them because Card makes you care. That being said, it is incredibly difficult, knowing that the children are so very young, to read how many hardships each face. I kept asking myself if Col. Graff would ever allow Ender to just be a child, if the torture was going to end any time soon. The fact that Ender just never spoke like a child either was more than a bit disconcerting for a girl that believes in children being children.
One of the responses I got from a friend about finishing the book was that she felt more adult at a young age because she was intelligent. While I can see that Ender, burdened with great intelligence, would not feel like a child either, the book does make you wonder how far we should push our true prodigies just to gain an end. Think of those in history like Mozart, a boy denied a childhood by his father because of his gift and who suffered greatly for that loss. Ender himself ends the book by telling Valentine he would like to move on from the world they have built with the colonists simply because he has not known a life without pain. That he was so used to pain he had to now seek it out. There is perhaps no line more tragic than that. When you couple that with the fact that *SPOILER* the buggers never planned on attacking Earth again, and Ender’s entire mission was therefore unnecessary, what does Card want us to take away from the story? (This is a major portion of the plot that if they remove from the movie will make the entire main question collapse, in my opinion.)
I am no fan of SciFi, but I found that Card does not overload his story with the nuts and bolts. Instead Card gives you just enough to grasp the futuristic pieces of his world, but not enough to overload those in his audience who could care less about the details. This combined with the more hopeful nature of how Ender’s Game ends makes me almost want to read more in the series. Almost. While he might torture his main characters, Card sure does know how to pull you in and make you invested in his creations.
Overall, technically a great book, but not my particular cup of tea.
Rating: 7/10
Audibook: 8/10
