Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card- Book Review

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card- Book Review

Title: Ender's Game 

Author: Orson Scott Card

Publisher: Starscape Books

Publish Date: 1985

Rating: 5/5

Summary(blurb): Once again, Earth is under attack. An alien species is poised for a final assault. The survival of humanity depends on a military genius who can defeat the aliens. But who? 

Ender. Brilliant. Ruthless. Cunning. A tactical and strategic master. And a child. 

Recruited for military training by the world government, Ender's childhood ends the moment he enters his new home: Battle School. Among the elite recruits Ender proves himself to be a genius among geniuses. He excels in simulated war games. But is the pressure and loneliness taking its toll on Ender? Simulations are one thing. How will Ender perform in real combat conditions? After all, Battle School is just a game. Isn't it?

**This book review may contain spoilers**

Ender's Game rightfully takes its place among my favorite novels of all time-- although it's not the best and most elegant novel I've read, it ranks as my favorites among others including Love, Rosie and A Monster Calls. When I first read it in sixth grade, it massively influenced my approach to life; Ender's characteristics and thought process was something I truly wanted to implement in my life. This recent reread has not changed my thoughts about Ender as a character, but I do have different opinions from what I had then.  

This sci-fi book is set in a future society where humans have made contact with insect-like alien creatures- called 'buggers'- and have already engaged in two wars with them. The world needs talented battle commanders against the buggers, and so has promising children sent to Battle School in space. Ender Wiggin is selected for Battle School; while there, Ender excels, never losing and getting promoted early. He is purposefully isolated, then given command over his own army-- this effectively hones his already impressive skill. 

He is then taken to Command School, where he learns from Mazer Rackham-- the only person Ender's ever met who's smarter than him. After learning that the buggers are a hive mind, Ender soon starts battle simulations against programmed Buggers, and his health deteriorates due to the stress-- but he finally wins by going near the Bugger home planet and blowing it up from the inside out. 

Then he learns that everything had been real battles against real Buggers, not programmed. Ender has just killed an entire race-- genocide. Xenocide. When he goes to other Bugger inhabitant worlds for the subsequent human immigration, he finds that the Bugger queen had known about him, through all that intergalactic distance, and understood his misunderstanding about the simulation. She has left a single pupa, full of yet-unborn buggers, and Ender's job is to find a habitable world for the bugger species to live again.

More than anything I loved the workings of Ender's psyche, which is a mixture of his siblings Peter and Valentine. One sentence I remember the most from my original reading was this quote: 

"He could see Bonzo's anger growing hot. Hot anger was bad. Ender's anger was cold, and he could use it. Bonzo's was hot, and so it used him."

This demonstrates just how logical and calculative Ender is; he analyzes and uses everything he has to his strategic advantage. As seen throughout the book, Ender sees bits of strategy nobody else would, utilizes all the logical advantages he has, analyzes every situation in depth, and uses body language to figure out future movements. His mental speed is incomparable, making multiple important deductions in the span of a few seconds. It's around the level of Thrawn (from Star Wars), probably even greater. As a sixth grader, I loved this-- he seemed to be almost omniscient, knowing others' motives and hidden actions. I wanted to be Ender, to be at the height of logical argumentation, to have cold anger that I could use instead of hot anger that used me. 

But on this reread, I noticed another equally important aspect to Ender that I hadn't given much thought to in the past: his great compassion, for anyone anywhere, whether they be friends, enemies, or buggers. The previous logical and ruthless aspect mostly came from Peter, but this compassionate love came from Valentine (this is why I said Ender is a mix of Peter and Valentine). It is is this compassion for his enemies that breaks Ender whenever he thoroughly defeats someone, especially after destroying the bugger homeworld (since Ender has just killed the entire race of buggers). As I reread the story, this quote stuck out to me this time: 

"In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him. I think it's impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves,"

This revealed to me just how deep Ender's emotional and psychological pain was-- this combination of Valentine's compassion and Peter's ruthlessness that allowed Ender to be perfect as a military commander was also a curse. Ender's perfect understanding of his enemy enables both complete destruction and complete love; He does the destruction while feeling the love. He channels both Peter and Valentine-- his actions are like Peter, yet his feelings are like Valentine. This leads him to question many times whether he is no better than Peter now; Valentine brings Ender back from the precipice multiple times by assuring him of the difference in heart. 

As for the other aspects of the book, I thoroughly enjoyed it both times; the characters were all important and memorable, as nearly all characters (besides the highest-up generals) went through development in the story and many played influential roles in shaping Ender's time at the Battle School. Although I kept imagining the kids as teenagers since they were so brilliant, I felt it could be justified since many of the characters were like that, and the whole point is that Ender is immensely smart. 

All in all, Ender's Game ranks as one of my favorite and most influential books of all time; Ender's character blew me away with his skills of analysis and deduction and strategy, and the experiences he goes through served well to highlight his personality, thought process, and intellect. Many of the other characters were memorable as well, especially Bean. 

I would recommend this book for anyone above middle school level-- it's about children, and the language is not too hard, but the primary focus seems like adults. 

Rating: I would give this a 5/5 - Ender massively shaped my life, both his intellect and his compassion, and taught me to focus on logic and rationality. For that very reason it deserves a 5/5.