I read this in high school, and it was one of my favorite's at the time. I just re-read it as the movie is out, and was glad to see it's still one of my favorites. Ender is pretty much just badass. The military strategy and leadership is actually one of my favorite things about this book.

The notion that Ender was set apart from the other kids as an intentional tactic to make him into a leader was always fascinating to me. In many ways I can relate to it. Ender's story is one of leadership, and leaders often have to balance empathy with big picture priorities. His older brother was too harsh and lacked empathy - but Ender is the perfect balance.

One of the key ways Ender keeps winning is by being aggressive and proactive, rather than reactive. Both with the bullies, in war games, and with the buggers, he takes them out before they have the chance to take him out:

"Knocking him down won the first fight. I wanted to win all the next ones, too. So they’d leave me alone."

"When it comes down to it, though, the real decision is inevitable: If one of us has to be destroyed, let’s make damn sure we’re the ones alive at the end. Our genes won’t let us decide any other way. Nature can’t evolve a species that hasn’t a will to survive. Individuals might be bred to sacrifice themselves, but the race as a whole can never decide to cease to exist. So if we can we’ll kill every last one of the buggers, and if they can they’ll kill every last one of us."

I didn't fully understand the point of the plot line about Enders brother and sister becoming net celebrities. I mean it was cool, but this cartoon summarizes it well: http://xkcd.com/635/

What I like about this book is that Ender is pushed to his limits to improve himself, which shows a raw side of humanity. It makes you think. Here is a quote which I think encapsulates that well:

"There is no teacher but the enemy. No one but the enemy will tell you what the enemy is going to do. No one but the enemy will ever teach you how to destroy and conquer. Only the enemy shows you where you are weak. Only the enemy tells you where he is strong. And the only rules of the game are what you can do to him and what you can stop him from doing to you."

So I waited quite a while to read this book but I have to join the masses in saying just how much I enjoyed it. This is definitely a really great sic-fi story and I think Card is a very good writer from the work I've so far read by him. This book in particular I whizzed through and devoured just because the character of Ender was such a likeable and heart-wrenching one.

In this story we follow young Ender as he's enlisted into Battle School. The human race have fought a few previous battles against a race of aliens and so now they are training children to kill these aliens in Battle School in the hopes that when they grow up they can take on the real aliens. Ender is one of the best they've ever had. He's calm and calculating, but he also has an emotional and genuine side to him. Being one of three children he takes the best from both his older siblings (he's able to kill like Peter and able to persuade like Valentine). This talent and dedication allows Ender to rise through the ranks, but not without difficulty and this is what we follow.

I have to say that the emotional level of this story did surprise me as I actually found myself hugely sympathetic towards Ender. He's had a hard life right from the start and the instructors do not make it any easier on him, but despite this he carries on! I think this character development and constant questioning of his own conscience and cruelty were vital to making this book work, and it really did.

The different political layers were also very interesting here as we have two different settings with Ender away from Earth at the school and his siblings back on Earth. I don't usually find politics particularly interesting to me within books becuase it's not a topic I find fascinating, but the simple way it was laid out here meant that it was actually a lot easier for me to be hooked into and enjoy.

Overall this was a solidly good read throughout and I did really, really like seeing Ender's story. I wish I had read this before I saw the film a few years ago as I think the end would have had more of an impact on me then, but overall I did really like this :) 4*s, recommended :)

Ender’s Game is a great sci-fi classic by Orson Scott Card, writer of The Ender Saga, The Shadow Series, and many more sci-fi novels. Ender’s Game is the first book in the Ender Saga, winning the “Hugo and Nebula awards for Best Novel” and the “Science Fiction Chronicle Reader Award for Best Novel.” The book isn’t just focused on one specific aspect, to keep readers involved there are a bunch of interesting angles and tensions in the book that make it really suspenseful. I was hooked from the first few chapters, but it just gets even more interesting after that. A unique thing about this book, different from most other sci fi books, is that while the book is really exciting with tons of action in it, it also brings up some deep ethical questions about the future that Card depicts. Through this book, Card makes powerful comments about the role of government, ignorance, and morality. All in all, Ender’s Game is a great book with all sorts of intriguing questions and interesting aspects. - Vedant S., Teen Volunteer

The Game Just Got Serious

The best books are those that make you think and wonder. Even when you finish them, you may not be certain of what they are entirely about. Science fiction often boldly takes us to places no one has gone before and Ender’s Game does just that. Although the main character is a child and most of the characters too are children, don’t make the mistake of believing it’s a YA novel. It isn’t.

The heart of the story is about a precocious genius and how that genius is harvested to save the world. It’s as much an ode to all the misfit genius kids out there who suffer so much from their age-group peers because they don’t fit in as it is a prescient vision of how since the book came out tech geniuses have radically altered our world. These genius kids are isolated from their siblings and from their classmates who can’t take the weirdness or are jealous of the success of such kids.

Here, though, the world is at risk from bug-eyed aliens and only a kid genius who can think faster and with more originality than anyone else can save the world. And that very isolation is cherished because there can be no assistance from anyone. There can be no salvation from anyone. Ender Wiggins has to figure out how to survive and win. And win he does in battle after battle like advancing to each new video game level and figuring out the new tricks.

Card masterfully creates a new war school for genius children - a veritable Hogwarts School in Space. He also anticipates the internet and the Information Age.

The Game theory here is so interesting. How do you anticipate and adjust to rule changes. How do you overcome the odds by doing the unexpected. And who’s running the show? Who’s pulling the strings? Who’s motivating us? And can we see the whole picture or are we just being manipulated?

Full video review here: https://youtu.be/PkA1HaceWqA

Every bit as good as the reputation it has received over the years. While it doesn't quite come close to knocking Dune out of the top spot of my favorite science-fiction novels, it has set up a residence in the same town. Highly recommended, for all ages.

4 Stars for Ender’s Game (audiobook) by Orson Scott Card read by Stefan Rudnicki and Harlan Ellison. I think this book would have worked better for me if I had read the words instead of listening to the audio. The descriptions of what the world was like and the different environments were lacking. At the end of this audiobook Orson Scott Card talks about the decision to write it this way. He wanted to leave it up to the reader’s imagination. He also mentioned that he had received criticism for a gory scene from a reader. Card had the reader look for the scene and it wasn’t there. It was in the imagination of the reader. I also wasn’t happy with the choice for the voice of Ender. The adult male voice made me forget several times that this was an eleven- or twelve-year-old boy. That said, this is a great story. This is a five star book and this is why I think the audiobook is maybe a four star.

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.

Debo confesar que tenía este libro en mi lista de libros por leer desde hacía mucho tiempo, da la casualidad que me topé con la película en la televisión y la vi completa. Ante los rumores de que era una adaptación muy fiel al libro quede satisfecho y decidí que no iba a leer nunca, groso error.

La historia tiene todos sus méritos para ser considerada de las mejores de la historia del género. Es increíble como el autor maneja conceptos que son más que vigentes para la actualidad, son prácticamente profeticos. Como el uso de dispositivos personales parecidos a la tablets con interfaces diseñadas para la nube y con IA, el uso de las redes sociales para difundir opiniones distorsionadas y cambiar la opinión pública al alcance de cualquier persona, el uso de la realidad virtual para el entrenamiento militar y los vídeo juegos de exploración tipo GTA.

Además de eso, Card ha escrito un libro conciso con sólo 350 páginas. Todo ocurre fluidamente y esto lo hace muy entretenido.

Me arrepiento en el alma haberme spoleado el libro con la película la verdad es que no vale la pena.

Lo guardaré dentro de mis libros favoritos de siempre.

n  n
Following the resounding success of my Locus Quest, I faced a dilemma: which reading list to follow it up with? Variety is the spice of life, so I’ve decided to diversify and pursue six different lists simultaneously. This book falls into my HUGO WINNERS list.

This is the reading list that follows the old adage, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". I loved reading the Locus Sci-Fi Award winners so I'm going to crack on with the Hugo winners next (but only the post-1980 winners, I'll follow up with pre-1980 another time).

According to Goodreads, n  n    Ender’s Gamen  n is the book most frequently shelved as ‘science-fiction’ or ‘sci-fi’. Since I joined Goodreads, n  n    Ender’s Gamen  n is the book most frequently recommended to me by friends here. Thank-you, Goodreads and co, for your part in introducing me to n  n    Ender’s Gamen  n; we got along splendidly.

You know that feeling: when a book just feels right? When you instantly feel at home in this world? When you get annoyed with the real world for introducing upon your time together? When you want to start all over again the moment you hit ‘the end’? When you want to bounce up and press the book into someone else’s hands so they might feel the way you do? Yeah? Like that.

Oddly enough, I started with book two in Ender’s Saga – n  Speaker for the Deadn – which is a very, very different book. I’ve given them both 5-stars, and I’m pretty excited to see what other twists and turns the story takes. I’ve seen some complaints that the series gets weaker as it goes along, but I’ve also seen people complain about the first two, and for me they were flawless victories – so I’m disregarding all naysayers and holding strong to my own opinion as shameless fanboy so far.

Quite simply, Ender is awesome. The scenario he faces is awesome. The challenges he overcomes are awesome. The climax is awesome. The fallout is awesome. The only thing that wasn’t awesome was the slightly contrived way the Hive Queen is delivered to Ender – that felt clunky – but by then there was so much momentum on this wave of awesome-sauce that I was in a forgiving mood.

I don’t have much to say in terms of critical discussion – I totally threw my analytical hat away about three pages into n  n    Ender’s Gamen  n and just immersed myself in the story. And I had a great time! It’s... extremely accessibly sci-fi. Super-smart, heart-of-gold kid, smacks down the bullies, teaches himself to be a military genius, shoulders the pressure and responsibility of the world, then saves mankind by kicking-ass at videogames. Hell yeah!

The zero-gee battle games (which make up a big part of the story) are a bit a childhood fantasy for me. It’s basically zero-gee laser-quest. It talks directly to my ten-year-old inner child. I had dodgy knees as a child and struggled to run in team games – but I dreamt about zero-gee. This next sentence should be written in giant, flashing capital letters but I’m going to exercise all the restraint I have: I want to play!

I understand that Orson Scott Card has publicly said some reprehensible things and that’s massively pissed some people off. Fine: the guy is a douche and I won’t recommend him as a dinner-party guest. But his work is superb and I would whole-heartedly recommend n  n    Ender’s Gamen  n to anyone with any interest (at all) in sci-fi!

Wiggin FTW! Woo!

After this I read: Sanctus

Le doy un 3,5 porque la historia está muy bien
escrita. Es un libro juvenil y no es una ciencia ficción dura, para pensar y recapacitar dígase desde el punto de vista científico. En mi caso particular, tampoco me ha dejado con la sensación de que seré mejor escritor por haber leído este libro. De todas maneras y como acostumbro a decir, estos puntos son solo parte de mis sensaciones sobre mi “viaje” a lo largo de su historia.
Es fácil de leer y el trasfondo se centra principalmente en las características y particularidades tácticas y estratégicas de los videojuegos. Estuve a punto de dejarlo a un lado, pero insistí, como deber hacerse, y te has gastado el dinero en ello

this book started off so good but immediately got silly, i don’t care how far in the future it is, it’s so unrealistic that children would be useful in the military. and then on top of that it’s realistic for young boys to be in the military but uncommon for women because evolution “worked against us” ok. also what do you mean a 12 year old and a 10 year old decide they were going to take over the world by starting a debate column.. just absolutely silly.

This is by far my favorite Science Fiction novel. I love this book! One of my favorite parts was when Ender took out the bully. People today are like “But we’re supposed to talk through our problems”....honey, there are just things in your life you need to punch out. Sorry. And punch out to win all future battles. This scene spoke to me because when David defeated Goliath he didn’t just sink a stone in his head and call it a day-which would allow the giant back up. Nope. David went over and cut the suckers head off. These two scenes for me symbolize how we need to completely cut off our fears. We need to go to the root of our fears and kill it. If we don’t, it will keep coming back. I really loved this book. There were no boring chapters. Countless times I would come across sentences and I would stop and think about them. Read this book. Your life will be better for it!