Ender's Game

Ender's Game, By Orson Scott Card

Review by Joel Kaderka

It has been a while since I read the beginning of this book, so forgive me if key points have been left out. I love this book and have read many books of the series. A strong piece that attached to me in this book is the military's involvement. The broad summary of this book involves the following. It is in the future, where Government even controls the amount of kids you have, and the only reason they have you have more than two kids is if they think your third would be a great space soldier. This is what Ender was, a Third, a derogative nickname for these kids. His official name is Andrew Wiggin, but goes by Ender since birth. His older brother, Peter, hates him for being better. His sister, who is inbetween their ages, loves him and protects him from Peter. Ender is without a doubt brilliant, and the government tests his skills for years, until they feel he is ready, accelerating him through training, starting two years young at age six and becoming commander around sixteen. Our war is no longer a petty human conflict. The buggers are out there, properly known as formics, and live as a hive of human-sized insects in the universe. After Ender leaves Earth for Battle School, he only sees our world again for about a month during his ten year training spree. Battle School is like bootcamp in space, where kids are in armies of fourty and battle eachother in null gravity rooms with high-tec, non-harming laser guns. This doesn't prevent Ender's mind from being harmed, however. He undergoes extreme stress from these burdens, and some may even call this ten year process psychological torture. He graduates from there extremely early, never losing a battle during his command no matter what odds. He even killed a guy at Battle School, as a part of The International Fleet's (I.F.'s) process of making him the perfect commander, but he was never informed of this mortality. He skips through several schools and goes to Command School, and a few of the semi-friend, intelligent kids from Battle School soon follow to be Captains under him. I say semi-friend because I.F. never allowed him to be able to depend on someone, for this would have ruined him as a Commander. When saving humans by wiping out the Buggers long after they attacked us, there is no friend to rely on, and I.F. wanted to make this clear for Ender. He soon meets his mentor, Mazer Rackham, the "savior" of mankind during the Second Invasion, who was presumably dead. He is thought to have died in battle, and even more uncanny is that he should have died from old age by now, but space travel slows time for the traveller. In training with Rackham, he does mock Fleet commanding on computer with his Captains. What they do not know is these are actual battles they are commanding, not play scenarios. Finally, they reach the last battle, involving a planet (the Bugger's home world). Soon after succeeding, Ender finds out he just commited Xenocide, killing the entire alien race off. It is amazing what we will do to a human being just to benefit others. He was not even an adult

yet. Years later of space travel to various, some uninhabited, worlds, Ender comes upon an old Bugger world, and finds a cocoon. He promises the cocooned Bugger Queen, through their mind communication to him, that he will search as long as it takes until he finds a world for them. This brings a sort of bittersweet ending, with the hopes for Ender to redeem himself.

It is a great book! I have read it three times and several of the "sequels". All around 350 pages. Some of the other books are the same timeframe, but from a different character's perspective, others are actual sequels. Great Sci-Fi.