Ender’s Game

Ender’s Game is a book written by Orson Scott Card. It took me all of three (3) days to start and finish this book. All 324 pages of it. Each page as gripping as the last. Why did I finish this book so fast? No, it’s not because I skimmed through it – trying to finish it in time to write a book report on it.

It’s because I just couldn’t put the book down. No matter what I did I couldn’t stop wondering what was going to happen next in this book. From the start it latched onto me and didn’t let go. Not even work, food, or sleep made me forget of this book. Made me wonder what will happen to Ender and this bugger/human war or what kind of lies and cover ups will be revealed. Today I finished the book and was amazed by the story I just read.

I don’t read a lot of books. The last books I’ve read were the Lord of the Rings books right before the movies came out. Since I do such little reading, you can either take this review and pass it off as nothing, or sense my excitement and enjoyment and read it yourself. It is a damn good book.

Yes, this book is old and was originally published in 1977. I’ve heard of this book before, or at least the name, but never knew what it was about. Recently, I’ve heard the name Ender’s Game coming from people I know, as well as several references made to it in music. So I did some research on it and found the book to be incredibly well liked. Also, the fact that it was a sci-fi book got my attention. So I bought it and started reading.

The book is about child geniuses and how they are taken, trained, and used to become Commanders and other high ranking officials. Stripped of any childhood they would ever have and sheltered or shown only what they wanted them to. More specifically this book follows one genius child named Ender and his life in the military school. But Ender is different from the other children, and the teachers and other adults know this. They push him and torture him in a way that no child should ever be treated. They do this to help make him the best Commander ever and to help reach his ‘full potential’. He is being used.

I said before that this was a sci-fi book and that’s the way they categorize it at your local book store. But I feel this is just the setting. The interplanetary wars, space travel, null gravity combat, etc are really just a background or setting to the actual story taking place – the story of Ender and his pain.

When reading this book, I kept forgetting that I was reading about children. These are all child geniuses and the way they talk, behave, and get treated make them seem like adults. I had a hard time picturing them as children in my mind. But when one would break and start crying, or fussing, or teasing you’d remember these are just kids (most under 10 years old). The author did a great job of doing this throughout the book. Sure they were kid geniuses who were smarter than a majority of adults, but they were still kids – kids who were no longer allowed to act or live like kids should. All for the sake of war. For winning a war that they know nothing about.

In the end this was one of my favorite books I’ve read. Ender’s Game was just the beginning. There are several books in this series that I now plan to read. And at last I leave you with one of my favorite lines from the book about one young child named Bean:

Once he named the feeling, he could control it. He lay back and forced himself to go through the relaxing routine until he didn’t feel like crying anymore. They he drifted off to sleep. His hand was near his mouth. It lay on his pillow hesitantly, as if Bean couldn’t decide whether to bit his nails or suck on his fingertips. His forehead was creased and furrowed. His breathing was quick and light. He was a soldier, and if anyone had asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up, he wouldn’t have known what they meant.