My Big Bad Ender Page

My son told me that a new movie was coming out called Ender’s Game. I’d never heard of it, but when I looked into it a little I discovered that it was actually a famous science fiction book, and seemed very interesting. I read the first book and was hooked! The movie was okay too, and it got me interested in reading the books, and here they are!

EGbook

EGbook

Ender’s Game – Wow – great book! I had not heard of this author before the movie came out, and my kid wanted to see it. WHen I found out that the book is famous and influential I wanted to read it before I saw the film, and I’m sure glad I did – it’s much better! While the film rushes through Ender’s training, the book dwells on it and really brings the refinement of Ender’s military genius to life (the film takes it for granted). The sub-plot of the political development of Peter Wiggins is a bit of a distraction, although I do like the idea that all three of the Wiggins children are exceptional (imagine, for example, that Napoleon’s brother and sister shone nearly as brightly as he did). But, we can’t all be Baldwins…

Nice twist at the ending too! Even the denouement chapter is good!! A great book also for kids, especially talented kids – this demonstrates what could happen if they’re taken seriously. It also up-ends the flaw in the Harry Potter series where we always wonder where most of the adult wizards are when the final battle with Voldemort takes place, and why they’re generally so useless. In this book, kids are prized for their unpolluted thinking. As they should be!

AWOG

AWOG

The War Of Gifts: An Ender Book – This is a great short story about Christmas in space, religious zealots, hypocrisy in life, and the culture in Battle School. Card brings in new characters, and weaves a fascinating little plot, waiting until the climax to unleash Ender on the problem (it’s wonderful watching him annihilate his challenge by using strategy, psychology, logic and diplomacy. Fantastic stuff!

Unfortunately, this is not really a novel, it’s more like the length of a short story – a small format book, in large font, with generous spacing to stretch it out to a mean 196 pages (tightly-spaced it might be only 40 pages long); if you took this along with you on a holiday, you’d finish it on the flight over. Anyone expecting a lengthy read should order a second book at the same time.

EIE

EIE

Ender In Exile – I’ve been reading the Ender books in their natural order, meaning that I started with Ender’s Game, then read A War Of Gifts, and now Ender In Exile, before moving on to the later three books in the original four book set. This one is the weakest of the three books I’ve read so far, being more like a collection of episodes in the life of Andrew Wiggins and the people around him – Ender resumes mail contact with his parents, Graff retires, Ender flies off to a colony world, Valentine goes with him, and all sorts of other nutty adventures/dull bureaucracy. The first 25% of the book can be skipped outright by anyone who’s read Ender’s Game because it’s a near-perfect parallel with the closing parts of that book (nothing new in there that I can remember). There’s the introduction of a nutty mother-daughter colonists, with their extremely strange relationship, and the mother’s wooing of the power-hungry transport ship captain Quincy Morgan. Their story of escaping Earth poverty is actually quite captivating, but they are soon written out of the plot, never to appear again, once their story arc completes. Another interesting episode describes the exploration of the colony planet Shakespeare, and the discovery of giant worms, alongside the revelation that they can communicate by mental telepathy. Wow!

What’s quite irritating is the email messages that preface every chapter – who wants to read bureaucratic missives and niceties, written in with quasi-military officiousness. Zero charm. I was very bored of this book by the time I finished it, which isn’t what I expect in the Enderverse. Ironically, Card pens an after-word where he talks about all of the research that went into writing this (now that the Enderverse has become such a sprawling creation), making it sound like this is the grand unification novel to tie everything together. I don’t think so, actually…

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