Tuesday 11 October 2011

Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card (1985)

I had to read this book for english and I found it surprisingly good. We got to choose between four different texts and I'm glad that I chose to read this one.

Although this book is written from a child's perspective, you hardly realize that at all as Ender thinks and acts way beyond his years. The plot of this book was interesting and well written, however I found that there was a little too much political jargon to find that part of the story at all interesting. Although this book is from a child's perspective, it deals with some very gruesome themes and there is a lot of psychological warfare and torment going on, which I found very full on and a little scary at times. My favourite character was Colonel Graff, you only get snippets of his life and his experiences however I really got the sense that he was a lovely person who truly cared about Ender.


This book is set in the future where an alien invasion of "buggers" fifty years ago has the world training children to be the commanders and soldiers in the next battle. Ender Wiggin is six years old and human kind's only hope of survival as he is a child genius. He quickly passes through battle school and moves to flight command where Mazer Rackham, the only person to have defeated the buggers previously, becomes his teacher. He soon goes through many computer simulations and on his final test he must go through a simulation in which there is a planet in the middle of battle. He defeats the simulation by exploding the planet, however then he learns that all the simulations were real and he had just killed all the remaining buggers. He and his sister Valentine then go in the "first colony" to live on the bugger planet and Ender discovers a fertilized bugger egg, ready to be hatched whenever. He takes it with him as he and Valentine go to explore the galaxy.

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