Yuffie's Book Reviews

Ender's Game - by Orson Scott Card

--Published Book--

THAT ENDING ALJFLSJFLSFJ PLOT TWIST OHMYGOD I HAVE BEEN MINDF*CKED

*ahem* Moving on to a proper review...

PLOT
It's your usual "Earth is awaiting an alien invasion and preparing its forces, and the MC is the CHOSEN ONE to command our main troops and kill the aliens! Oh, and he's 6 years old and one of the smartest people in the world. And we're going to send him to Battle School to train and become awesome." Battle School is a space station up in space where the government brings all the child geniuses of the world. There's a room with null gravity where the kids play this game/training exercise where they shoot lasers at each other and try to make it to the enemy's gate. The lasers freeze body parts, so it's as much a game of strategy as a game of skill.

The MC, Ender, is 6 years old, and by the end of the book, he's barely 12. So he's young, but he doesn't really feel like it since he's smarter than most adults. Though we do get some hints throughout that he's still just a little kid.

What I really loved about the plot was how Ender wasn't just some prophecised chosen one who's definitely going to save the world. The adults watching his progress from the background stated that he's not the best, he's just the best they can do. If he doesn't save humanity, they're out of time and options, so they have no choice but to peg all their hopes on him.

And they will push him to his limits. Do everything they can to look negligible so that he thinks--knows--that no adult will ever help him no matter what. If he's in trouble, he has to get out of it himself. So basically the people in charge keep putting him in the worst possible situation at Battle School, making him look like a teacher's pet, getting the other students to hate him before he even steps foot inside the school, having him advance years before he should so he's always the smallest (and most hated) person in each of the kids' armies. When he finally gets to commanding, they have him fight matches every day, sometimes twice a day--which is unheard of.

Speaking of Ender's problems, he fights a personal struggle outside the game room. His older brother Peter is a textbook sociopath, and he's barely 10 years old. Peter is cruel, exploits people's fears and hurts them, and he's also just as brilliantly genius as Ender. He bullied Ender and frequently threatened to kill him. So obviously, when Ender ends up hurting people who tried to hurt him, he believes he's more like Peter than he ever imagined and that he's becoming Peter. The way Card writes this is very passionate in this normally somewhat emotionless, rock-faced little Ender. It humanizes him even though he's smarter than most of us will ever be even as adults. It makes us really sympathize with him and his plight, and that's what makes Ender such a strong protagonist and makes this book a page-turner.

At the beginning of every chapter, they had a short exchange of dialogue in a different font from Ender's pov. It was just dialogue, no narration, usually between the adults in charge. I thought this was a very smart move by Card. Since we're usually limited to Ender's pov in the normal narration, this gives us an outside perspective on what's happening to him and why--why they're pinning so much on him and pushing him so hard. Why they're manipulating him (and on a side note, Ender KNOWS he's being manipulated. It was a really cool dynamic because Ender makes it clear that he's not letting himself get manipulated because he's naive and doesn't realize the manipulation is there. He's letting himself get manipulated because he, like those in charge of him, know the manipulation is necessary to make him into the best soldier ever created.) It really built up Ender and put him on a pedestal in the story. If not for those short passages, I would probably not like the book very much.

With all the coolness of the plot, there was an obvious pacing problem. Most of the book spends time on Ender's arrival to the school, his problems with the other kids hating him and how he gradually had to earn their respect and stop the bullying, and then his time playing the laser game. The laser game constituted a bulk of the novel, and after you're about 2/3s of the way through, he's still playing and competing and learning strategy. The story spans about 5-6 years, so a lot of that is glossed over through a few lines of telling. This wouldn't be a problem if the fast-forwards didn't happen so frequently, and then what came after the fast-forward was more of the same thing--him getting accepted by his army, him getting an army of his own and training them. There were some very "zoomed-in" scenes where things were shown in detail, but then a few pages later, more telling to skip ahead. I see how it was necessary since nothing groundbreaking or important happened during all those time skips--which is obviously why Card skipped all that time--but it makes me think that maybe there wasn't enough substance in the plot to begin with, not enough to carry a sci-fi to the scope of the human race being destroyed by alien "buggers".

In fact, overall, the plot itself felt very thin compared to how much the conflict against the buggers was built up through those start-of-the-chapter passages. These buggers and the invasion get so hyped up, that when we're just a few chapters from the end (of this 300+ page book) and Ender is STILL training, it makes me raise an eyebrow.

About halfway through, Ender's older siblings, Valentine and Peter, start this conspiracy plot to take over the world. I felt like this, plot-wise, was pretty irrelevant. It could've been left out and the plot would still continue exactly the same. Nothing huge happened because of it, and also, a LOT of it was just telling. Basically, Valentine and Peter took on secret online identities, Demosthenes and Lock, and wrote all these political commentaries online and garnered a HUGE following. This happened over a span of years, but in just one chapter, so a lot was told. But a lot wasn't told, too.

Card never explicitly showed exactly WHAT Valentine and Peter were writing. he just glossed over it it in a roundabout way, saying Valentine didn't agree with what she was writing as Demosthenes, but we never found out WHAT she was actually writing and how it was making a difference. It was a huge headdesk moment and a huge flaw in the book. It felt like Card just didn't know how to write proper political commentary, so he just told us that they wrote it. A huge cop-out. I'm still scratching my head at what the point of this even was. Yes, it was phenomenal development of Valentine's and Peter's character, but beyond that, all these scenes held zero relevance to the plot and were executed quite poorly.

But right at the end you get a plot twist, and all the shortcomings of the plot are somewhat forgiven. It was PHENOMENAL. I'm still thinking about it and being mind-blown. So despite the droning pace about 2/3s in, make sure you read all the way to the end. It's like one of those mind-blowing The Sixth Sense endings that make you see the last 1/3 of the story in a whole new light. It's fantastic.

WRITING
The writing was nothing spectacular. There were a lot of missing commas and an insane amount of run-on sentences. Not sure if that was a stylistic choice or not, but it didn't seem like it, which made the prose clunky and hard to read at times. Some sentences I had to reread because a comma was missing or it ended up being a confusing run-on. Still, if you can read through those sentences fast and gleam their meaning, it's not too intrusive.

The book was written in 3rd person, but Ender's direct thoughts were inserted in 1st. However, it wasn't put into italics, which was a bit jarring since I'd be reading 3rd and suddenly I'm reading 1st person and no idea how that happened. Still, you get used to it after reading a few chapters.

CHARACTERIZATION
Phenomenal. PHENOMENAL. The characters are the strongest part of this story. You have Peter, the oldest brother and textbook sociopath. He was supposed to be the chosen one to lead the troops to victory, but he ended up being too ruthless, too evil, so the government scrapped him before he made it to battle school. So they made Peter's parents have another child, Valentine, but in contrast, she was too mellow, too nice and empathic. So the government told them to have another child, Ender, who's personality was a middle-stance between Peter and Valerie. So just the dynamics of the three siblings from the start are so brilliant.

About halfway through, we switch to Valentine's pov, and she and Peter start this conspiracy on Earth while Ender is away in Battle School. Valentine KNOWS Peter is just manipulating her, but she uses that as her strength, because she can manipulate him now. But as they get deeper and deeper into their conspiracy plot, she compares herself more and more with Peter. At one point, she believes she and Peter are really the same. This is the same struggle Ender is going through, and seeing it in Valentine too really hits it home. It sounded subtly like social commentary, that all humans might be inherently evil, like Peter, but they also might not be. It's heavy stuff, and Card talked about it beautifully in Ender's and Valentine's thoughts. This whole struggle with them vs. Peter was what made the characterization really stand out. Very well done. So while I'm banging my head against the wall at how these scenes were executed plot-wise, characterization-wise they were glorious.

Peter and Valentine are Light and Misa from Death Note if Misa was a genius and not infatuated with Light. I've been dying to read a dynamic like that ever since watching Death Note, and I'm so happy to finally have that fulfilled! :)

And I can't think of much else to say, so we'll end here. Overall, this book is definitely worth a read. The ideas and the way Card presents are very thought-provoking. He takes the being-the-chosen-one to a very different level than I've seen before--just the way some sentences are worded to convey a slightly different take on this dynamic. Seeing how Ender overcame his obstacles and gained acceptance using strategy and smarts, but sometimes also with a good kick to the groin, was exciting to read. Some of his strategies were pretty mind-blowing, too, so while there was that pacing problem in the middle-end of the book, I never got bored. It was still widely interesting to read! It's a very human book, and shows human struggles, internal and external, very well. The way Ender deals with things is very different from how most would, but it's completely believable and endearing at times.

Whether you're a sci-fi fan or not, make room for it on your reading list. While not perfect, it's worth reading.

3.5/5 stars