Book Review: Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card

Jason, fellow writer here on Geekcentricity, invited me to join a book club he was setting up amongst Facebook people and friends.  Very knitting circle of me right?  Well fear not dear readers this is no ordinary Reader’s Digest book club.  Nay!  Here reside all manner of horrific creatures, fantastic journeys into the dark bowels of distant worlds, and races through dystopian futures.  That’s right Jason does book club like Captain Kirk does alien women.  The right way!  That’s how.  So we now have a super awesome horror\fantasy\sci-fi\whiskey\anything awesome book club called Cosmic Adventure Corner on FB.  Our first read was Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card.

Ender’s Game is about a seemingly Utopian future where government is rigidly in control of the lives of the world’s inhabitants.  An alliance of earth’s governments is working to defeat the insectoid threat to humanities existence known as “buggar’s.”  Humans live in fear of another invasion by the alien species after the last one nearly wiped the entire allied space fleets out.  Due to planetary overcrowding families are restricted to only two children, which are manipulated genetically during gestation to produce the most highly developed children possible.  Geniuses.  The children are potentially the saviors of the human race.

The story centers on Andrew Wiggins, aka Ender, a highly developed boy genius among a siblinghood of geniuses.  The problem is his siblings failed the strict and intense screening process for potential candidates for Battle School, an orbiting space station for children to refine their combative and tactical skills, proving themselves worthy of becoming teen commanders of the galactic fleets.  So due to the promise Ender’s older brother Peter and older sister Valentine showed, the government granted his parents the approval for a “Third.”  Any child past the governmental restriction was considered a source of derision and poor status amongst citizens of the nations.  So Ender being a “Third” was also a point of contempt and constant harassment from his older brother and fellow children.

The interesting thing about how Card portrays children in this story is the brilliance and maturity they exhibit.  Now of course they are geniuses, seeing as how they’ve been genetically mastered for excellence, but they also show great emotional expression, terrifyingly sadistic at times, painfully sorrowful at others.  But consistently strung through the story is the evidenced struggle of a child trying to be more than an adult and a savior of a world.

The book reads pretty quickly and is very engaging as you follow Ender through his brief introduction on earth before being whisked away to Battle School and beyond.  Card’s writing is easy and smooth to read, and combined with the engaging content, makes for an enjoyable experience.  The book is a bit shorter than a full novel, but not as short as a novella.

In general I’ve found that stories that rest on tales about children to drive the plot often fall short of action, intrigue, or even anything interesting at times.  Card does an excellent job keeping those shortcomings at bay.  That may very well be why Ender’s Game is one of the classic, must-read sci-fi books.  Oh yeah, did I not mention it was written back in ’85 or so?  Yeah this isn’t new, just new to me.

So if you’re looking for a great new read that isn’t tied to some licensing or IP, like a Warhammer book or Forgotten Realms story, I highly recommend Ender’s Game.  It’s quick, fun, and incredibly engaging.

What are your favorite styles of sci-fi novels?