Ender’s Game is an enjoyable hero-story-cum-space-opera featuring a small boy who is plucked from ignomy as the third child in a family on population-restricted Earth, and taken away to join the space academy and fight a great threat to humanity.
It’s actually far more engaging that I’m making it sound. Card ensures that Ender is suitably conflicted about his role, and that fact he is a child is brought forward just enough to make the character believable, despite the entirely unbelievable setting he finds himself in.
All in all, a very good read. Although, I will say the resemblence in story-line to The Last Starfighter is making want to track down that old classic. This is especially the case considering the age of the protagonist and the early-teen style of the writing.
30 May, 2009 at 10:38 pm
Going to read any more in the series?
I read some of them recently. I found Speaker for the Dead very interesting, just made it through Xenocide but couldn’t get into Children of the Mind at all, so that’s about where I stopped.
31 May, 2009 at 12:07 am
I found Speaker for the Dead very interesting
SNAP. But also very undergraduate angst ridden. It was kind of, like, h.e.a.v.y, man.
31 May, 2009 at 9:35 am
i had a suspicion the remainder of the series would be hard going [read: crap].
and agree that the series has that potential to become a little dark.
a small boy who’s plucked to save the world and the weight is on his pre-teen shoulders? [/ack]
1 June, 2009 at 1:56 pm
Did you know of the Shadow series? Written reasonably recently, years after Ender’s Game, Ender’s Shadow is the same story form Bean’s point of view. I’d recommend it. I’m working my way through the shadow series now – just finished Shadow of the Hegemon, which continues the story on Earth, with the focus on Bean, and also tracks Petra & Peter Wiggan’s stories. The books in the Ender series continues Ender & Valeries’ story in different planets & their interactions with indigenous species. They’re Okay.
1 June, 2009 at 5:21 pm
Ender’s Game was originally a short story IIRC. I though it a good story and a good novel. The sequels – Law of Diminishing Returns applies although I did enjoy them both.
I had to give up OSC about then on account of his being a complete shithead.
3 June, 2009 at 11:31 am
I was about to mention the complete shithead thing. “Enders Game” was the best book ever when I was 15. I don’t think he’s done much else that rates above average, and TBH I didn’t particularly rate EG when I re-read it a few years ago. Though that could just be my knowledge of OSC’s politics/beliefs colouring my perception of the book – not ideal, but I can’t help it.
3 June, 2009 at 2:52 pm
great… a homophobe.
explains the bits with the boys hugging one another and the weird borderline romantic relationship with the sister.
why are homophobes always so weirdly conflicted?
11 June, 2009 at 3:36 pm
Enders Game is seen by quite a few critics as an allegory for / justification of genocide… As long as you *feel* bad about it, its ok… The worrying thing is that it is quite a good story, but that doesn’t diminish the potential harm of the sub-plot / theme….
11 June, 2009 at 7:56 pm
dawned on me the other day that it’s based on spartan agoge – military schools established to channel citizens into the army.
looks like orson might, just quietly, be a “fascist”.