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.

I was savaged by a miniature poodle the other day--wait--no, someone protested my review of The Giver the other day. If you have any pent-up rage from that college lit teacher who forced you to think about books, be sure to stop by and spew some incoherent vitriol--my reviews are now a socially acceptable site of catharsis for the insecure.

In any case, one of them made the argument that children need new versions of great books that are stupider, because children are just stupid versions of normal people. Happily-enough, The Giver is a totally stupid version of A Clockwork Orange or whatever Dystopian book (actually, it's a rewrite of Ayn Rand's Anthem).

Coincidentally, in my review of Alice In Wonderland, I happen to put forth my own philosophy regarding children's books. In short: they should present a complex, strange, many-faceted, and never dumbed-down world, because presenting a simple, one-sided, dumbed-down world both insults and stultifies a child's mind.

However, if someone were to say that this book were a childrenized version of Starship Troopers, I wouldn't sic a poodle on them. Both present a human/bug war, deal with the issues of death, war, the military complex, human interaction, personal growth, and all that good stuff.

Also, both authors have their heads up their asses and there must be a pretty good echo in there since they keep yelling their hearts out about one personal opinion or another. However, Orson Scott Card doesn't get into his pointless author surrogate diatribes until the second book in this series, so we may enjoy the first one uninterrupted.

So it's a pretty good book for children, and like romeo and Juliet, it's easy to see the appeal: kid defeats bullies and plays videogames to save the world(in one of the sequels, they save the world by making angry comments on the internet--surprising that one isn't more popular here). But more than that, it's not a bad book in general, so I guess I don't have to bother defining it as dumbed-down, or 'for kids'. Then again, a lot of grown-ups seem like they need their books dumbed-down. Just look at The Da Vinci Code compared to The Satanic Verses, or Foucault's Pendulum; or all three compared to The Illuminatus Trilogy. I'm pretty sure when it comes to stupid versions of things, adults have the monopoly.

“Sólo el enemigo te enseña tus puntos débiles. Sólo el enemigo te enseña sus puntos fuertes. Y las únicas reglas del juego son qué puedes hacerle y qué puedes impedir que él te haga.”


Este tiene que ser, sin duda, uno de los mejores libros de ciencia ficción escritos. El juego de Ender, es un libro que lees del tirón, ágil y muy bien escrito. Está ambientado en un escenario de ciencia ficción digamos algo sencillo, nada complejo. Una tierra del futuro amenazada por una especie alienígena hostil con una tecnología superior que parece decidida a destruir la raza humana.


La historia se centra en un niño, Ender, que es reclutado en un programa de entrenamiento militar que lo consume todo a la edad de nada menos que 6 años. Este programa busca forjar una nueva, dura y muy superior generación de comandantes militares a partir de estos niños superdotados, y su único propósito es romperles a cualquier precio, con el propósito de descubrir a aquellos que no se puede romper.


Su protagonista, Ender Wiggin, tiene solo seis años al comienzo de la novela y todavía es un preadolescente cuando termina la historia. Los padres de Ender han recibido un permiso especial para tener un tercer hijo a pesar de las estrictas leyes de control de la población en la sociedad en la que viven. Sus brillantes hermanos mayores, Peter y Valentine, tienen todo tipo de promesas, pero aún no tienen lo que se necesita para ser considerados como el comandante que la Flota Internacional necesita tan desesperadamente.


La novela plantea una pregunta importante: ¿Qué se necesita para llevar con éxito a los hombres/niños a la batalla? La batalla se nos presenta en forma de invasiones alienígenas. Durante la última invasión que tuvo lugar, la humanidad sobrevivió gracias a la brillantez de Mazer Rackham, el comandante de la Flota Internacional.


Años más tarde, se teme una tercera invasión y el I.F. cree que Ender puede ser el comandante que necesitan. Esperan que pueda llevarlos a la victoria en caso de que los "insectores" vuelvan a invadir la Tierra.


“Pero como los adultos siempre decían lo mismo cuando algo iba a doler, podía considerar esa afirmación como una predicción exacta del futuro. Algunas veces las mentiras eran más de fiar que las verdades.”


Lo que sigue es una historia emocionalmente compleja y en ocasiones dolorosamente familiar de niños que luchan por aceptar sus demonios internos. Ender, en particular, es el que más destaca, una combinación brutal de profunda empatía por los demás y un abrumador instinto de supervivencia que lo impulsa a ganar sin importar el costo. Es esta combinación de dones que pueden convertirlo en el comandante que la flota necesita en su guerra contra los invasores alienígenas, pero solo si Ender puede encontrar una manera de comprender a su enemigo tan a fondo que ya no pueda verlos como, el otro bando, sino como un reflejo de sí mismo.


La historia es vertiginosa, y el estilo de Card me gustó, un lenguaje sencillo y una descripción simplificada que sirve para llevar a todos los personajes al frente y al centro de la historia en todo momento. Card trata a sus muy jóvenes protagonistas como personajes tridimensionales inteligentes y ya plenamente realizados que luchan con preguntas muy adultas.


La otra firma de Card es crear drama a través de varios dilemas éticos, esto también es un elemento central de la historia, y hace un muy buen trabajo al desafiar al lector a encontrar algo parecido a un terreno moral elevado en cualquier lugar. Los conflictos entre personajes se vuelven aún más poderosos por la casi total falta de misterio, pues las motivaciones y la intención se presentan con mucha claridad en la mayoría de los casos, y es la capacidad del lector para empatizar con el punto de vista de todos lo que hace que la historia sea menos sobre ganar o perder y más sobre vivir con las consecuencias de cualquier resultado.


“La humanidad no nos pide que seamos felices. Sólo nos pide ser brillantes en su nombre.”


Este libro me sorprendió y muchísimo, lo admito es estimulante, emocionalmente muy complejo y éticamente desafiante. Es un examen poderoso del conflicto y la violencia, la necesidad militar, los roles familiares y las formas en que usamos la idea del "otro" para justificar todo tipo de salvajismo. Por cierto, la película vamos es que no le llega al libro ni usando microscopio. Este libro y mira que ya llevo unas cuantas joyas de la CF, clásica, los mejores para mí. Este ocupa un lugar al lado de, Flores para Algernon.


El libro es mucho mejor que la película. Sé que probablemente hayáis leído esta frase y otras en muchas reseñas. No puedo llegar a expresar completamente todo lo que ha sido la exquisita lectura de, El juego de Ender. Es que no puedo encontrar un solo defecto. Todo perfectamente escrito y construido.


"Sólo hay una cosa que hará que dejen de odiarte. Y esa cosa es ser tan bueno en todo lo que hagas que no puedan ignorarte."


El desarrollo de los personajes en el libro es realmente asombroso. Realmente no se parece en nada a la forma en que la película presentó a los personajes. Todos se sentían importantes y su transformación tuvo un gran impacto para mí. Personajes como, Valentine y Peter estaban muy establecidos, y su viaje cuando eran niños fue algo diferente, completamente interesante y divertido al mismo tiempo. La película creo que ni mostró que ambos se convirtieron en Demóstenes y Locke. Esa parte de su historia realmente me asombró. Este libro mostró que la edad no importa para marcar la diferencia. Se trata de niños y niñas que muestran un enorme coraje y además absoluto conocimiento. No me agradaba nada Peter en el sentido moral, pero su violencia e intimidación creo que llevaron al crecimiento positivo de Ender y Valentine. Y si afectó a Ender de mala manera, pero si luego observamos el cambio general que emanaba Ender, es notable cómo la violencia condujo al éxito. Creo que el autor fue demasiado duro con sus personajes, demasiado duro pero es esto precisamente lo que más destaca del libro y en el buen sentido. La trama es interesante y da varios giros, destacando sobretodo el final y el enorme desarrollo de los personajes, ahí fueron increíbles. Muy bien escrito y está todo pensado para impactar al lector. Es algo original para mí al menos y asombroso.


"Podría matarte así, susurró Peter. Solo presiona y presiona hasta que estés muerto"


Escuela de Batalla, donde los niños brillantes son entrenados en estrategia y duras tácticas militares. Ender está aislado, es ridiculizado, intimidado y prácticamente perseguido. Pero es decidido y muestra los medios para sobrevivir e incluso prosperar y evolucionar en esas difíciles circunstancias. Su asombrosa inteligencia, con la que el niño aprende a ser un líder y a actuar con la venganza de un soldado. Su juventud y pequeña estatura no logran detenerlo, y Ender asciende rápidamente. Ender tiene solo 12 años cuando comienza a comandar a sus compañeros soldados, ganándose así su respeto y, en última instancia, su miedo hacia él. Todo termina en sorpresas.


La pieza central de su educación es un juego que simula una batalla. Ender es muy bueno en este juego, y esta es la razón principal por la que se convierte en el comandante más joven de la historia. De todos modos, la vida de Ender en la escuela y los diversos juegos, pruebas y tribulaciones en las que sobresale ya no solo están maravillosamente escritos sino que es una gozada ir leyendo todo lo que pasa, creando en el lector una necesidad de querer ver como evoluciona en concreto el personaje de Ender y como termina su dura preparación. Es un libro impresionante, en todos los niveles. Impresionante e imprescindible.


“Los seres humanos son libres, excepto cuando la humanidad los necesita. A lo mejor la humanidad te necesita. Para hacer algo. Creo que la humanidad me necesita a mí para averiguar para qué sirves. Los dos podemos hacer cosas despreciables, Ender; pero si la humanidad sobrevive, habremos sido buenos instrumentos.”

I didn't think I liked Sci Fi. Maybe I still don't... but you have to be on mind-altering drugs not to LOVE this book. Actually, mind-altering drugs might make it better. Hmm.

2.5 Stars

I had no intention of picking up Ender’s Game for two reasons – One, I came to know about this book only recently when I happened to see a mini-trailer of the movie and saw a little kid saving Earth, which put me off despite being okay with Harry Potter, really. Two, OSC came into focus by his conservative views on marriage and sexual orientation followed by an outcry demanding to ban EG. But I grew heavily curious if his views explicitly shaped his most famous work, and had to read it.

Honestly, I found the work immensely unbelievable if I kept in mind the fact that the protagonist Ender was between 6 and 10 years old throughout the work. It seemed too implausible for a young mind to attain adulthood so easily, even if he was gifted. Being sharp, intelligent, exceedingly adaptive and perceptive is one thing – and gaining a maturity that is accumulated by years of exposure to experience and an ever-widening world is quite another thing. By half the novel, I was so annoyed I couldn’t enjoy it. But once I stopped forcing myself to see him as a kid and let myself assign him an age I thought was believable to me (mid-late teens in the first half of the book and mid-late twenties in the latter half), I found myself curiously enjoying the story.

Now, this is an interesting story, despite being so clichéd and possessing hardly any novelty. The writing is well-paced, the twists are not forced, and although I didn’t relate myself to any of the characters, it is obvious it would touch some nerve with some bright kids going through that alienation. Also, it is not a literary kind of story, though it had immense potential to be a really good bildungsroman. It is a plain story in plain words, easy on the mind, and possibly more popular than it is worth because it touches a certain group of people not before adequately represented in fiction.

As a military SF work, it is curious and inadequate – it is fit neither for young children, nor for adults – it contains a bit of violence, nearly negligible sexual explicitness and young protagonists, but it is too complex as a piece of psychological work for little kids to understand. And kids’ psychology is the focal point of this novel. I’d rather 6 year olds watch Doraemon/Micky-Minnie-Donald-Scrooge-Tom&Jerry cartoons, even though I don’t find all of them beyond reproach from certain perspectives. For adults, it is too simplistic a piece of fiction to be enjoyable. Perhaps, kids in mid-late teens might appreciate it if they can relate to it and have nowhere else to turn to.

I had hoped for some beautiful observations on growing up, some touching instances of friendship-formation, of emerging from childhood into adolescence in a world where an innocent kid had to grow up too fast – what it meant to be a child, what it would be to lose that innocence and to be flung in a world that afforded no love, no care, no warmth. But, well, OSC misses the mark completely.

n  Can we know the dancer from the dance?n

I’ve been meaning to review this book as objectively as possible – and I wanted to read it precisely because I wanted to see if I could know the dancer from the dance, OSC from EG. I was pretty sure I would be able to pick out some insinuations about his conservative, inflammatory views on homosexuality. Surprisingly, I didn’t.

I did see blatant, overt sexism that could have been easily rendered logical, given its genre of SF. Now, this very sentence in the beginning caught me off-guard, and alerted me to further potential signs of sexism.

n  "A few girls. They often don't pass the tests to get in. Too many centuries of evolution are working against them. None of the will be like Valentine, anyway."n

Now, despite my sincere wishes to see more women, more non-Whites, non-Western, non-strictly-heterosexual settings in SF, I’m quite okay with Men, Whites and Western, Heterosexuals (MWWH now onward) settings as well. The beauty of SF is that with a pseudo-scientific explanation, it is very easy to incorporate strictly MWWH without being offensive to the non-MWWH categories. What bothered me here was that there were no logical explanations for the new world. Or whatever they are, they do not amount to much.

Only two women of consequence are present here – Valentine (Ender’s sister, conceived in order to induct her into the army, but rejected because she was too soft, too conciliatory, and therefore, though it is not explicitly stated, too feminine. Peter, their eldest sibling with his unruly nature only acts as a foil to Valentine and a double assertion of this feminine/manly dichotomy. And another girl is the one with Ender who helps him save the world.

About the quote I cited about ‘few girls passing the tests’, no further explanation is given. What kind of evolutionary process? OSC doesn’t bother to explain, while he spends endless pages of explanations on some things that really didn’t matter to the story at all.

Possibly the only strong female character in the story is the co-fighter with Ender and the sole girl in the BattleSchool, and she plays second-fiddle to Ender (okay, I know she is a minor character), but she is also the only character to fail at the most critical juncture. Alai, the only non-White (presumably African) and non-Christian character too has no role beyond helping Ender, though he is definitely portrayed better than I expected.

Now, I have issues with it because I saw in the HP movies how these obstacles were overcome and could have been done so here too – HP and other characters were kids, but were better specimens of bildungsroman. Hermoine and Ron were as well-rounded, individual characters as Harry himself, and no less important. Harry alone did not defeat Voldemort – the entire wizard world did it with him. Harry is not infallible. Nor are others. And HP, despite having few female characters actively taking part in the series, is far from sexist.

So because it can be done, I found it immensely irritating it wasn’t done. I’m pretty convinced that OSC’s personal beliefs have a lot to do with this portrayal, which comes across to me as a typical White Male Fantasy. His Mormon neo-conservative views might have had a significant bearing on his characters that are dangerously impressionable on young minds. As for the recent furor over his anti-homosexuality views, I could detect no such instances of it in the book, nothing even faintly propaganda-type. Except for the complete erasure of sexuality in a school full of teens.

I was dithering between 2 and 3 stars – it was lucid, well-paced, but ordinary. It is a teenage White Male fantasy with clear anti-Russian leanings. As an SF work, the part about the games is well-delineated, imaginative, but at some critical junctures, scientific explanations are missing. The world-building is haphazard, sloppy, and yet it is overall readable. Or maybe I found it so because I was just done with something nastily heavy as Spivak and needed a real no-brainer controversial lucid book.

I fail to understand how this deeply flawed piece won the Nebula. Hugos, I don’t pay much attention to, because they are voted on by fans. But I’m increasingly being disappointed by some inclusions in Nebula, especially those in the post-1980s.

But ‘nuff said, it was annoying enough not to make me reach for his other books. Solely based on the (de)merits of this one, rather than OSC’s personal whims. Because if the dancer cannot be separated from the dance, I cannot read/enjoy at least a quarter of the wonderful books I’ve read. Unless an author seeps noticeably into his works, there’s no point in doing otherwise. The author must remain in the back of the mind, and not completely obliterated. S/he must be brought to the fore whenever it is necessary and appropriate to do so. But when the author and the work are unrelated, it is best to keep them separate.

5.0 stars. Classic story by Orson Scott Card that deserves its place as one of the best SF novels ever written. Superb, highly charged emotional story of the effect of war, not only on the people who must fight in it, but on the society forced to change in order to wage it. Ironically, given the plot of the book, the message of the novel could be stated as follows: "war is no game." I would add that one of the great strengths of the novel is the way Card portrays the relationship among Ender, his sister Valentine and his brother Peter.

Winner: Hugo Award for Best Science Fiction Novel (1986)
Winner: Nebula Award Best for Best Science Fiction Novel (1986)
Nominee: Locus Award Best for Best Science Fiction Novel (1986)

I reread Ender’s Game in preparation for writing an Essay to be included in an upcoming collection of Ender Essays. Just wanted to say that the book is as compelling and as brilliant as when I first read it twenty years ago!

Recommended to me by my friends over the years, I kept on putting it out of my schedule. That was a mistake.

The book deals with politics, science, young boy's achievements and bravery.

"In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him. I think it's impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves."

Excellent book. I didn't care for the way the series went after this volume...(the later books tell you more about the writers belief system than about the story sometimes. But that's only my opinion.)

As for this book It's a well done and interesting story. The characters are well developed and real. Mostly, I liked it.

I have recently heard a few comments from Mr. Card in which he comments on the greater success Ender's Game has enjoyed as opposed to the volumes that followed. He expresses the opinion in said comments that Ender appeals to a "younger" audience having more action and also being centered around a child and that the other books deal with deeper more complex issues and therefore didn't do as well. I suppose it will always be the case that readers have a differing view and opinion of a writer's work than he himself does. This is, for me at least, the case here. While what he says is true in that EG does have more action etc. and is about a young character (ie) Ender, I don't believe he's hit the actual reason for the first books success completely on the head. In my humble opinion Ender's Game is simply..... a better book. I think it's a far better book. That doesn't mean I didn't get his later books (yes I got the secret early on in Speaker For the Dead as I suspect most did) yes I understood... no I didn't agree in most ways and I was a bit bored. Not however exclusively from lack of "action". The books after Ender's Game (at least up to the Bean books which try to start over) are far more concerned with Mr. Card's theosophy than with over all story or his future history and I burned out on his theories and opinions early on.

Some may of course disagree with that (as I know Mr' Card does) and that's fine. This is my opinion and what I saw. I just read Ender's Shadow (reviewed later) and may "re-look" at some of the other books. I read Empire by Mr. Card and saw a lot of the same "opinionating" there and didn't follow that book up...same view even a familiar character doing familiar things. Still, this is an excellent book and I highly recommend it. Check the rest for yourself and see what you think of them. I could be wrong ;).

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 readers to read Ender's Game any which way they please. In his own words:

I designed Ender's Game to be as clear and accessible as any story of mine could possibly be. My goal was that the reader wouldn't have to be trained in literature or even in science fiction to receive the tale in its simplest, purest form. And, since a great many writers and critics have based their entire careers on the premise that anything that the general public can understand without mediation is worthless drivel, it is not surprising that they found my little novel to be dispicable. If everybody came to agree that stories should be told this clearly, the professors of literature would be out of a job, and the writers of obscure, encoded fiction would be, not honored, but pitied for their impenetrability. (p.xix)

Ok, so he loves to toot his own horn (and did he "design" it that way or was he just not able to write anything more elaborate? ouch, snarky Shannon!), but since I really don't like wanky, pretentious writing, I appreciate the unadorned prose of Ender's Game. It's no Neuromancer, that's for sure *grimace*.

Quick Summary - a few spoilers
Ender's Game is set sometime in the future, when the world is divided up differently and yet united under various pacts and hegemonies to face the threat of the "buggers" - an insect-like alien race with a hive mind that attacked, and was repulsed. Now, after a successful defeat in the Second Invasion 70 years before, the powers that be are feeling the strain of finding the person to lead their own invasion force, sent to the buggers' home world after the Second Invasion. The starships will be in place in a matter of years, and their one hope is 6 year old Ender Wiggin, one of many genius children who have been monitored for the right qualities for years. Sent to Battle School with all the other geniuses (mostly boys), he is isolated and pushed to extremes no other student is, all to find out if he is the one, and if he is, to have him ready by the time the starships reach the buggers' home world. Training is done in null gravity in the battlerooms, "armies" against each other, and Ender excels at the game. But with Ender's level of genius he quickly attracts hatred and hostility from some of the others students. His own efforts to beat the game draw him closer to his biggest fear: that he will be just like his older brother Peter, who would have been here in his place if it weren't for the fact that he's a sadistic kid who relishes torturing others.

------------------------------------------
That this book is about children trained to be soldiers and skilled killers didn't really shock me - it happens in the real world often enough, and in a much more hellish way, as I learned from reading A Long Way Gone. But it's still a pretty horrible thing to do, brought on by sheer desperation it's true, but the things these children endure are things most adults would crumble under. They think and speak like adults, and I really needed the reminders of their ages. Ender is only 11 when the war with the buggers finally ends. But there is definitely something poignant and utterly tragic about the loss of innocence - if these kids with their higher intellects and greater-than-usual understanding and awareness were ever innocent - and childhood. One of the kids, a little 6 year old boy called Bean, helped drive this home:

He felt terrible. At first he thought he felt bad because he was afraid of leading an army, but it wasn't true. He knew he'd make a good commander. He felt himself wanting to cry. He hadn't cried since the first few days of homesickness after he got here. He tried to put a name on the feeling that put a lump in his throat and made him sob silently, however much he tried to hold it down. He bit down on his hand to stop the feeling, to replace it with pain. It didn't help. He would never see Ender again.

Once he named the feeling, he could control it. He lay back and forced himself to go through the relaxing routine until he didn't feel like crying anymore. Then he drifted off to sleep. His hand was near his mouth. It lay on his pillow hesitantly, as if Bean couldn't decide whether to bite his nails or suck on his fingertips. His forehead was creased and furrowed. His breathing was quick and light. He was a soldier, and if anyone had asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up, he wouldn't have known what they meant. (p.224)

However, it's less the human condition and more a sort of anthropological perspective of human attitudes and alien race relations that interests me. The notion of superiority, of the right to live and survive no matter the costs to the enemy, of judging other species' intellect by their ability to think like us and see us the way we see ourselves - this is what really fascinates me. From the time the European settlers arrived in Australia and decided the Aborigines were barely human because they couldn't say a tree was "a tree" and didn't understand that taking a sheep was stealing, to the idea that because the buggers look like insects they don't have feelings, or reasoning. Remember the aliens in Independence Day? I mean, aside from that movie being just another propaganda film for the Greatness of America (it smacks of insecurity that some people feel the need to reinforce this myth, but oh well), the aliens were, well, alien - and once reduced to the unknowable Other, gone is the human conscience in destroying them.

Because Ender studies the buggers' strategies and tactics, to understand them, he feels compassion for them. He wants to understand them completely, but nothing is really known about them. It isn't until the end of the book that we find out more, as does Ender, and the real enemy becomes us rather than the buggers, for being so stubborn and self-righteous and superior, that we sought to destroy destroy destroy before finding out anything about what we were destroying. Which is, classically, what humans are best at: destroying. Much easier than creating. Kill first, ask questions later kind of attitude. Do we even deserve another planet to colonise when we don't even know how to look after this one? Well, a question for another day, though I make no effort to hide my own cynacism and contempt.

This book is considered a science fiction classic and the vast majority of people who have read it have loved it and studied the crap out of it. There are some negative reviews of course, and one I read here on Goodreads made several very good points, notably that the characters are rather one-dimensional ("cardboard cut-outs" was the expression he used), which I thought was quite accurate - there really wasn't much character development, especially with Ender of all people; and that there was a "creepy pedophile vibe", with all the references to naked little boys, and the scene in which a naked, wet and soapy Ender fights an older boy in the showers. Hmm. Now I'm going to have trouble shaking that one off! Someone else who also gave it 1 star made a crack at the Introduction and Card's smugness (and he is very pleased with himself, and doesn't mind telling us), and that he "feels it necessary to rant about Fantasy and how derivative it is compared to Science Fiction" - I must have missed that part, but isn't it so much more fun to read negative reviews than positive ones? As long as you've already read it, that is ;)

I actually marked pages in this book, passages that resonated with me while I was reading it, but now when I go back to them and read it again, I see nothing special, and I can't remember why I committed the crime of dog-earing a page. Anyway, while the book didn't amaze me or show me anything new, and I saw the "twist" coming and, to be honest, was rather disappointed that the buggers and the war were actually real and the whole Battle Game thing wasn't just some sick, cruel scientific experiment (might have made for a more interesting book?), Ender's Game was a surprisingly fun read (must be all the games, I thought they were kinda fun), and plot-wise it was well written despite several unanswered questions that could be called plot-holes if they had been more important. I just have one more quote from Card, because I absolutely agree with it and he puts it so well:

Why else do we read fiction, anyway? Not to be impressed by somebody's dazzling language - or at least I hope that's not our reason. I think that most of us, anyway, read these stories that we known are not "true" because we're hungry for another kind of truth: The mythic truth about human nature in general, the particular truth about those life-communities that define our own identity, and the most specific truth of all: our own self-story. Fiction, because it is not about somebody who actually lived in the real world, always has the possibility of being about ourself. (p.xxiv-v)

This is such a brilliant portrait of character development not only with Ender, which was seriously top notch, but literally every character you come in to contact with.

It seriously blows my mind all this little boy was able to achieve at such a young age. I mean I know he's a genius but I think of my 8 year old son and I'm not able to comprehend everything he had to go through.

One thing I reallllly loved is there was no love story. Not one little shred of it. Don't get me wrong I enjoy them from time to time but it had no place here so I'm glad to author had the wisdom to focus and not stray away from the core story.

I can't wait to dive in to the 2nd book!

I watched the movie too, let's just say it didn't really live up to the book. But then again, they rarely do.

Este fue el primer o segundo libro de Ciencia Ficción que leí y por cosas de la vida después de casi 20 años todavía no he continuado con la saga. Así que he vuelto a leer esta historia y las sensaciones han sido las mismas: una magnifica historia que se lee en un suspiro y que ahora puedo apreciar mucho mejor. Ahora puedo ver la influencia que ha tenido esta historia en libros de otros autores y cómo el mensaje de Scott Card sigue siendo vigente hoy en día (algo desactualizado porque hace mucha referencia al Pacto de Varsovia, la URSS, etc. Pero si cambias los nombres por algo actual sigue funcionando).

Un clásico de este género que puedes recomendar tanto a pequeños como a mayores.