Milskidasith reviews Ender's Game, and makes use of titles that probably got more people looking at his review than a bland but more informative title would (IE newspaper headline style).

Ender's game is a novel written by Orson Scott Card set a few decades or centuries into the future (It's never really clear on this as far as I can tell). The basic concept for the setting is that, through a bunch of unexplained treaties and various factions, the world is entirely at peace in order to unite against an alien threat, the buggers. Ender, the protagonist, is a kid who is somewhere between his murderous brother and his totally nonviolent sister. He gets chosen to go to Battle School, a floating space station built to train kids to be commanders of the army designed to protect humanity from the Third Bugger Invasion.

And right here is where I started having some slight problems with the book. Besides the total lack of immersion in the world up to this point, we now have the entire launch of kids going to Battle School acting like stereotypical bullies. They seem to act dumb and stupid, yet all of them apparently passed tests that showed they had shocking levels of knowledge on psychoanalyzing people, had high general intelligence, and knew how to command. But they generally act dumb for the rest of the book, and have paper thin, if any, motivations for being jackasses.

Even the side characters important enough to have names barely have any character development, and all seem to fit into the "nice but exceedingly skillful soldier" mold, which just makes things worse. Of course, it all seems to fit when we consider that Ender himself is a Mary Sue, a character who has near godlike abilities in every aspect that would be important to the story, and has the plot entirely revolve around him. Every storyline event has him at its center, and every time anything changes in the school it is solely done by the administration in order to make him feel more miserable, more alone, and more detached from others so that he would be prepared to sacrifice soldiers when he commanded the International Fleet against the Buggers.

The book isn't all bad, though. Sometimes Card manages to be genuinely clever about the next way to screw Ender over, and at the very least Ender's personality is pretty well done, though since he is the focal point of the story it would be a pretty awful book if it wasn't. The problem is, while individually segments may be good, even brilliant, when put together they just don't work well. What annoyed me most was the fact Ender realized at least five times that the adults were screwing with him and they shouldn't be trusted, yet in a fight he knew would be to the death his first thought is that the adults will save him.

Another notable example is Ender's brother Peter who was, as I previously described, a vicious and evil person, who wanted the world to have peace. It's somewhat justified that he wanted to be ruler of the world, but as far as the book bothers to describe anything it seems like, instead of using the power he desired to further himself, the world appears to be peaceful and well ruled, instead of what you would expect, a rule by a leader who wielded near God-like power over his subjects. Another thing I couldn't fathom was why the Battle School would take 10 year olds into it instead of 14 or 15 year olds, where they could have the general amount of time in it and be fully developed adults instead of little kids who could not, as far as the book was concerned, think up any cleverer insults than "fart eater."

I've ragged on about the characters a lot, so I'm sure you guys are trying to figure out more about the plot. Well, it's not hard to find out about the plot. Everything in the plot is tiresomely predictable, and the message of the story is pounded into your skull like a stake into the ground often enough you just know it's going to repeat again in the next ten or twelve pages. The main messages seem to be violence isn't good but is sometimes necessary, being smart is more important than being strong, and that friendship can beat even the greatest evils, and they just never cease to be repeated by some barely unique event that happens. I could probably describe the plot of the book in more detail than that, but really, that's all you need. If you read the book and can't guess the next major plot event, you probably skipped the page where Card practically told you what it was going to be.

Now, to sum things up, Ender's Game is a bad book for what it tries to be. It tries to have a deep main character, but, while he has a somewhat well done personality, he just has no real faults and you just can't sympathize with him. It also tries to have good life messages that, while sometimes not pretty, are helpful, but the repetitiveness of them weakens any impact they may have had. But the book does manage to be good for what it was not trying to be, and that is a somewhat darker than usual "soft" sci-fi book that is great for if you want some quick light reading or need a good book to recommend to a child around age eleven or twelve. I made a lot of harsh points about the book, but those points only matter when you try to read the book for what it wants to be. Like an Adam Sandler comedy, if you just sit back, relax, and take it for what it is, it's good, if not great, but if you try to take it for what it tries to be, you are in for a huge disappointment.

milskidasith:
Milskidasith reviews Ender's Game, and makes use of titles that probably got more people looking at his review than a bland but more informative title would (IE newspaper headline style).

You're right you know. I thought this was about the R.E.M. song.

Great review. Good length, fairly detailed. Sounds like a weird novel though.

milskidasith:
Another thing I couldn't fathom was why the Battle School would take 10 year olds into it instead of 14 or 15 year olds, where they could have the general amount of time in it and be fully developed adults instead of little kids who could not, as far as the book was concerned, think up any cleverer insults than "fart eater."

Well if the book is targeted at 10 year olds, perhaps it's a device to get the reader to relate to the characters more, much in the same way that in the Harry Potter books, Harry is about 12 (at least for the first few).

It was targeted at adults. Probably should have mentioned that. Also, it turned out to appeal to children the most... so yeah, once again it shoots a bullseye on the wrong target.

Also, it isn't as weird as I made it seem. As far as sci-fi goes, it's pretty light.

I read Ender's Game back in eight grade and enjoyed it... So much so that I decided to pick up it's sequel, Speaker For The Dead

UGGGH couldn't finish it was so dry, boring and depressing it made me want to tear my eyes out

I actually rather like this book. On the surface it may not seem like much, but dig a little bit deeper and you will find quite the commentary on the ethics of killing, self-defense or not.

Wright, all the self defense motivations can be summed up as simply: "It's bad but sometimes you have to do it" which I alread listed there. And it's far too often repeated to be an effective message.

Nice review. I liked the book. But I preferred by far the first half of his training, the space combat bits were a bit boring by comparison.

I liked Ender's Game as a kid because it didn't tread all kids like complete idiots but still treated them like kids. (Although you think Ender should have figure out what happening at the end.)

The Sequels were weird. The series started out fairly simplistic with the whole boy-fights-aliens thing. By the end of the series we have alternate realities, A.I, giant essays on meta physics, and characters trying to understand the meaning of creation.

I loved the book (the sequels, not so much) each of the three times I read it, especially the little game they played on their personal computers. Although I will say that the side series, the Ender's Shadow trilogy about the character Bean, was actually more enjoyable than Ender's Game and its sequels. The side series really explores the other characters in the series, and shows the aftermath of the end of the war. If you wanted more character depth from the book, you should definetly read those.

xitel:
I loved the book (the sequels, not so much) each of the three times I read it, especially the little game they played on their personal computers. Although I will say that the side series, the Ender's Shadow trilogy about the character Bean, was actually more enjoyable than Ender's Game and its sequels. The side series really explores the other characters in the series, and shows the aftermath of the end of the war. If you wanted more character depth from the book, you should definetly read those.

Yeh Bean is a much more interesting character but Ender's Shadow has the same type of messages as ender's game.

Daymo:

xitel:
I loved the book (the sequels, not so much) each of the three times I read it, especially the little game they played on their personal computers. Although I will say that the side series, the Ender's Shadow trilogy about the character Bean, was actually more enjoyable than Ender's Game and its sequels. The side series really explores the other characters in the series, and shows the aftermath of the end of the war. If you wanted more character depth from the book, you should definetly read those.

Yeh Bean is a much more interesting character but Ender's Shadow has the same type of messages as ender's game.

Difference is, Ender's Shadow doesn't bury those messages under a classic sci-fi style plot. They jsut come right out and say it. It's more of a socio-political commentary than the sci-fi novel Ender's Game was.

Read all of them, thought they were pretty good, although I do admit the shadow series was a little more successful in not confusing me like the sequels in the Ender series did.

To be honest, I enjoyed "Speaker for the Dead" and its sequels more than the original book. Don't get me wrong, I liked "Ender's Game" plenty. It's just that the messages apparent in SftD seem a little bit better thought out and definitely deeper. The debate over what varelse actually are was, to me at least, very stimulating and I find the very concept of a Speaker fascinating.

I will admit, the first time I read it through it did seem a little, fine, a lot, dry. But the second read made things much clearer and far more interesting. As for "Ender's Shadow" and its ilk, I found them to be extremely enjoyable narrations of a possible future.

I have only read the "Speaker for the Dead" in the rest of the Ender series but I didn't like it much. Ender's Shadow was pretty good and "Shadow of the Hegemon" was decent but the rest of the Bean series ("Shadow Puppets" and "Shadow of the Giant") were terrible. I lost all respect for Card when he made spoiler marry spoiler.

I liked the end of the review. Get it? Huh? Huh? .... I don't either.

A while back my teacher read this book to my class. Good book but seems that some people will only be interested by the crude writings in it.

I have some special edition of the book or something, which basically adds an author's introduction. It talked about how people that were actually in war liked it because it was talking about what they were going through. He also talked about how he got ragged by a lot of the deeper members of the literal community for his book being understandable by regular people.

Personally I liked Ender's Shadow better (same story except through the eyes of Bean) because the protagonist was more brains than charisma and analyzed things more accurately and didn't repeat things over and over as much.

First off, it would be literary community, Angry. I'm reading Ender's shadow now, actually, and so far the message in the story has actually been done better, if only because, though it's more openly in Bean's thoughts, it makes *slightly* more sense for him to be thinking that than for Ender to constantly have to mope about how his god skills at anything combat lead to him completly destroying somebody when it was totally necessary he did destroy them.

It's a decent book if taken as nothing more then a science fiction novel. I never read the others, had no desire to.

milskidasith:
It was targeted at adults. Probably should have mentioned that. Also, it turned out to appeal to children the most... so yeah, once again it shoots a bullseye on the wrong target.

Also, it isn't as weird as I made it seem. As far as sci-fi goes, it's pretty light.

Ya know? I read it while I was little and loved it, but read it several years ago and didn't find it quite as engaging as it used to be...

wrightofway:
I have only read the "Speaker for the Dead" in the rest of the Ender series but I didn't like it much. Ender's Shadow was pretty good and "Shadow of the Hegemon" was decent but the rest of the Bean series ("Shadow Puppets" and "Shadow of the Giant") were terrible. I lost all respect for Card when he made spoiler marry spoiler.

Speaker for the Dead would have been much better if Card decided halfway through to crowbar Ender into it (to the extent that he went back and rewrote the original Ender's Game short story into a full length novel, to the massive detriment of the original story).

The core mystery was quite enjoyable, but literally every time Ender showed up in a scene it ground down into dreary shite.

The tedium of reading Xenocide can only be properly conveyed by mentioning that it has in-depth descriptions of Obsessive Compulsive behaviour.

I gave up on Card after that.

My suggestion is to read the book Card lifted the plot of wholesale, Starship Troopers, because whilst Heinlein is almost as much of a whackjob as Card, he can at least tell a better damn story.

Thank you for making this review, though you were a little late. I had to read this book for school over the summer, and just last month I wrote a review for it. Of course it was horrible, since it's for school. But if you wrote this then I would've paid you to use it. Not that I would expect you to let me.

But besides that little dissapointment, it was a great review. I really focused on the faults regarding the characters as well, and said a lot of similar things to you, so the best part of this review is reassuring me that I'm not crazy.

In fact, you said just aobut everything I did, just a lot better worded and...overall better. I wish I could've written this. Great review though.

Maybe it's just that I disagree with you on this book, but I just don't feel like you provided really much of any evidence to support most of your claims. While I'll agree that the administration's actions throughout the book were a bit contrived and served only to "advance the plot," there was really little to no specific discussion of the characters. Writing a detailed review, as I believe you are doing, totally justifies taking up a paragraph or two to discuss Bean, Ender's siblings, and other characters at the Battle School in order to more clearly make your point.

I guess my point is that my perspective on the novel has not really changed or even really been challenged for the most part. With a little more depth, I really do think that a better argument could be made. Please note, I am really trying to only offer some constructive criticism here, and I think it's pretty brave to post something like this for people to dissect on the Internet.

ElephantGuts:
In fact, you said just aobut everything I did, just a lot better worded and...overall better. I wish I could've written this. Great review though.

Thanks for the compliment.

Dr Spaceman:
Maybe it's just that I disagree with you on this book, but I just don't feel like you provided really much of any evidence to support most of your claims. While I'll agree that the administration's actions throughout the book were a bit contrived and served only to "advance the plot," there was really little to no specific discussion of the characters. Writing a detailed review, as I believe you are doing, totally justifies taking up a paragraph or two to discuss Bean, Ender's siblings, and other characters at the Battle School in order to more clearly make your point.

That's just the thing, Spaceman. If I used two paragraphs to describe the characters, I'd literally be giving them more personality than Card did in his entire book (Ender's Shadow series excluded, which raises a few plotholes on Bean's personality... and then handwaves them in the epilogue saying that any errors were just the (third person) narator recalling differently in each book.

But if you really want my prognosis on the characters for Enders game:

Valentine: Self doubting Mary Sue genius who doesn't like violence. IE, Ender after killing somebody.

Peter: Supremely confident Mary Sue genius who likes violence, power, and control, IE Ender whenever he is threatened.

Bean: Take any generic soldier, make him shorter and younger than Ender, and have him feel like he deserves leadership and you have Bean in a legume shell.