Wow, I can't believe I haven't reviewed anything since July! Sorry for that; I know how ravenously my fans await my writing. To be sure, I have not ceased reading. Oh no indeed. I can't even remember how much stuff I've read since July, but that just means it's too damn much. I get at least four books a month read (not namby-pamby little paperbacks either) and I tend to forget what they were, although if you asked whether I'd ever read a certain book or not I could tell you for sure. Actually, let me say that in the space of July, August, and September, I've read some 10 novels plus innumerable graphic novels (literally 20 or more), and listened to at least 4 audiobooks. I'm not counting comics or manga either, both of which I've also read a buttload of. Enough of that! On to the book.
This book has been reviewed to death and is universally loved. There's very little I need to say in regards to whether this is a great book or not. It is and almost everyone who reads it ends up liking it very much. For those of you who have never heard of this book, here's a very short plot summary. Ender Wiggin is a third child in a future where parents are restricted to two upon threat of financial penalties. This is because of the shortage of resources due to the "Bugger Wars" going on. Earth has been attacked once by an alien foe and the humans are building fleets to fight back. Ender is the third child of a genetic union predicted to bring forth a military genius. The first two children were unacceptable, but Ender is everything the military is looking for (so they think) and he is whisked off to Battle School in orbit around Earth. While there he is given the arduous job of leading an army of boys like him in battle simulations against other armies of boys. However, this game is no simple game at all. Ender must fight for his life against other boys in the school. Eventually he is promoted to command school, where he plays simulations that teach him how to command a fleet...or so he thinks. Can't say more than that without spoiling things.
There would be so much to say if I even tried a comprehensive review that this would get ridiculous and I wouldn't finish tonight. I don't have that kind of time so I'm going to restrict it to some thoughts on Card's writing in his books.
Ender's Game is the best Orson Scott Card book I have read. Card has a tendency to keep his language simple and a very fine way of treating characters (when he's at his best that is). Card wrote this for a young audience, although from what I've read of his other books none of them feature extreme sophistication of language. Not that that's a drawback. Sometimes you need eloquence, sometimes you don't. Card's books deal with people who would fit in in our reality and the realistic dilemmas they find themselves in, and Ender's Game is the pinnacle of a human story, albeit in a science fiction setting (the setting is an asset, not a drawback).
Card said he wrote this book for a younger audience, and it cannot fail to resonate with them. It deals with a lot of themes for younger readers such as loneliness, alienation, the stress of expectations,the sometimes brutal treatment other children can dish out, the just plain difficulty of growing up. Ender has it worse than most, to be sure, but that can only help readers sympathize with him. Despite the fact that this was written with younger readers in mind though, this is certainly a book any adult can read. Card does not talk down to his audience, which means that even though the book is written for children, it can be read by any adult without having to sit through pages of exposition where some character expounds a plot point which the author assumes kids are too dumb to have figured out on their own. That's not to say he makes you figure it all out either; it's just he doesn't resort to the old "parlor scene" denouement. In other words, it's not Scooby-Doo (or Harry Potter).
One of the things you might never learn about this book without reading the author's notes in the printed version or listening in the audio version is that the book Card set out to write was The Speaker for the Dead, nominally the second in the Ender Series. Even though he started on that, he wrote Ender's Game as a short story to provide the background and an explanation for the character of Ender in Speaker for the Dead. But once he was finished he basically ended up realizing he needed to write more and turned it into a novella. And then he did it again and turned it into a full-blown novel. I'm not entirely sure that he did all that before writing The Speaker for the Dead. But at some point he had them both out.
The third and fourth books, Xenocide and Children of the Mind were actually the third book that he game up with after Speaker for the Dead. He and his editor decided that it would be best to split that book into two because it was too long and there was a natural splitting point in the middle. They still ended up being pretty long individually. And he now plans on there being a fifth book, bringing together the Ender and Bean series (although I haven't read that other branch of books yet, so I can't say if this is welcome or not).
I don't know if this is a great idea or not. Xenocide and Children of the Mind were not so great. Card explains that these books were basically his mechanism to philosophize about what consciousness and life is. I might like to read about his ideas in a non-fiction setting, but it basically slowed the story down interminably. Of course, to be fair, the only reason there was a story to keep some semblance of readability. It really was just a philosophical playground. There are no major philosophical points I agree or disagree with in his ramblings. I don't begrudge him his play time, but it's not really why I picked up his books in the first place.
In short, if you loved Ender's Game, you can quit right there. The book and story is entirely self-sufficient and you will either be satisfied at the end or not. If you are not, the following books will not make you satisfied. Well, I can almost say that with perfect certainty. You might like them.
