Ender's Game
Books | Fiction / Science Fiction / Action & Adventure
4.5
(42.5K)
Orson Scott Card
From New York Times bestselling author Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game—adapted to film starring Asa Butterfield and Harrison Ford—is the classic Hugo and Nebula award-winning science fiction novel of a young boy's recruitment into the midst of an interstellar war. In order to develop a secure defense against a hostile alien race's next attack, government agencies breed child geniuses and train them as soldiers. A brilliant young boy, Andrew "Ender" Wiggin lives with his kind but distant parents, his sadistic brother Peter, and the person he loves more than anyone else, his sister Valentine. Peter and Valentine were candidates for the soldier-training program but didn't make the cut—young Ender is the Wiggin drafted to the orbiting Battle School for rigorous military training. Ender's skills make him a leader in school and respected in the Battle Room, where children play at mock battles in zero gravity. Yet growing up in an artificial community of young soldiers Ender suffers greatly from isolation, rivalry from his peers, pressure from the adult teachers, and an unsettling fear of the alien invaders. His psychological battles include loneliness, fear that he is becoming like the cruel brother he remembers, and fanning the flames of devotion to his beloved sister. Is Ender the general Earth needs? But Ender is not the only result of the genetic experiments. The war with the Buggers has been raging for a hundred years, and the quest for the perfect general has been underway for almost as long. Ender's two older siblings are every bit as unusual as he is, but in very different ways. Between the three of them lie the abilities to remake a world. If, that is, the world survives. Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game is the winner of the 1985 Nebula Award for Best Novel and the 1986 Hugo Award for Best Novel. THE ENDER UNIVERSE Ender series Ender’s Game / Ender in Exile / Speaker for the Dead / Xenocide / Children of the Mind Ender’s Shadow series Ender’s Shadow / Shadow of the Hegemon / Shadow Puppets / Shadow of the Giant / Shadows in Flight Children of the Fleet The First Formic War (with Aaron Johnston) Earth Unaware / Earth Afire / Earth Awakens The Second Formic War (with Aaron Johnston) The Swarm /The Hive Ender novellas A War of Gifts /First Meetings
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More Details:
Author
Orson Scott Card
Pages
448
Publisher
Tor Publishing Group
Published Date
2017-10-17
ISBN
0765394863 9780765394866
Ratings
Google: 5
Community ReviewsSee all
"My 2¢:
4.3/5 ⭐
Orson Scott Card's ENDER'S GAME is a gut punch; an interstellar allegory about humanity's reactive survival instinct and how it tends to make us into fearful, cold beings who do things as a means to an end.
In the story society has genetically engineered their children to become efficient weapons in the war against an alien race called The Buggers. The lead character, Ender Wiggin, is an exception to society's two child policy, being the third child who carries traits of his psychotic older brother and empathetic sister. A great deal of the story is about Ender's internal struggle between his fear of being a killer like his brother and trying to remember his empathy, while understanding who he is apart from his siblings. He is manipulated throughout the book, isolated and ostracized from the other kids at Fleet School, put in harm's way more than once, and psychologically pushed to his limits. It's greatly disturbing to read a story about how kids are stripped of their childhood in the name of survival, but Card writes Ender with such compassion and perseverance that it makes this type of story bearable and sees us through the bigger themes in the book.
Though not a fan of political lit, there are some things in this story, written in the mid 80s, concerning the manipulation of public opinion that are far ahead of its time. In terms of style I wasn't a fan of the mini preludes at the beginning of each chapter. It does give a sense of string pulling, but in terms of narrative flow it slowed things down for me. Also, the passage of time seemed flat. Ender goes from one age to another with little sense that we are going on this span of time with him. I think Card was trying to depict the distorted sense of time the characters experience, but to me it just felt at times like I wasn't completely in sync with Ender throughout the span of years. Still with all this ENDER'S GAME was an enthralling read, if at times a bit brutal.
"
"A solid classic. The only thing that takes away from it is that it have been heavily borrowed from since its original publication, so that the plot twists are obvious. "
K
Kay