Monday, January 06, 2014

Book Review: Ender’s Game – Orson Scott Card

Ender’s Game – Orson Scott Card
Ender's Game (Ender's Saga, #1)
In order to develop a secure defense against a hostile alien race’s next attack, government agencies breed child geniuses and train them as soldiers.  A brilliant young boy, Andrew “Ender” Wiggin lives with his kind but distant parents, his sadistic brother Peter, and the person he loves more than anyone else, his sister Valentine.  Peter and Valentine were candidates for the soldier-training program but didn’t make the cut—young Ender is the Wiggin drafted to the orbiting Battle School for rigorous military training.

Ender’s skills make him a leader in school and respected in the Battle Room, where children play at mock battles in zero gravity.  Yet growing up in an artificial community of young soldiers Ender suffers greatly from isolation, rivalry from his peers, pressure form the adult teachers, and an unsettling fear of the alien invaders.  His psychological battles include loneliness, fear that he is becoming like the cruel brother he remembers, and fanning the flames of devotion to his beloved sister.

Is Ender the general Earth needs?  But Ender is not the only result of genetic experiments.  The war with the Buggers has been raging for a hundred years, and the quest for the perfect general has been underway for almost as long.  Ender’s two older siblings are every bit as unusual as he is, but in very different ways.  Between the three of them lie the abilities to remake the world.  If, that is, the world survives.


4/5 stars (really liked it)
My son and I read this book together.  Although I found that the battles were repetitive by the end of the book I understood why all those battles were in the book.  The book starts out with Ender being 7 years old and going in Battle School.  Everything that happens to him, from being isolated and constantly being tested is done by the teachers to make him the perfect general to defeat the Buggers.  By the end of the book Ender is 11 years old and ready for the Bugger war.  Although the ending surprised me quite a bit.  I will definitely be reading the next books in this series.

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