Ender’s Game
By: Orson Scott Card
My Rating: FIVE OUT OF FIVE STARS
Best For: 14 and up
This isn’t the first time I’ve re-read an old favorite and found something new there.
But…
This is the first time I’ve re-read an old favorite and found something entirely different.
Turns out, Ender isn’t cool science fiction about kids who go to battle school in a last ditch effort to save the human race from alien invaders.
Well, actually it is. But that’s the book I read before.
This time, I read a cool science fiction book about a brilliant little boy who saves the world, but nearly destroys himself along the way. He saves himself in the end through his enormous capacity for compassion and empathy for others.
Ender’s message of learning about your enemy until you love them, thus making them no longer your enemy but your friend, is a bright message in our dark world.
Ender didn’t just save his fictional world. He taught us how to save our real one.
I can’t believe I missed this before, but I’m so glad I found it now.
There’s a lot more mild language than I remembered too…
Increased my rating from 4 stars to 5 and changing my reco to 14 and up from 12 and up.
Everyone should read Ender’s Game. I wonder what you’ll find?
Happy Reading!
Originally Reviewed 8/31/11:
In the future, Earth has been attacked once by the Buggers, an alien race of insect like creatures, and Earth’s unified military expects another attack. To prepare for the impending invasion, the best and brightest children are recruited into Battle School–a highly advanced military training physicality in space. They are searching for the one child who can save humanity from certain destruction . . . and they think they have found him in Andrew “Ender” Wiggin.
That’s Ender’s Game. It’s considered among the most influential books in history; it is the standard against which all other science fiction books are compared. It is the winner of the two most prestigious awards in science fiction, is #59 on the reader’s list of Modern Library 100 Best Novels, and is on the American Library Association’s “100 Best Books for Teens. It is even on the U.S. Marine Corps list of recommended reading for officers in training. (Thank you Wikipedia)
Not to mention that Ender’s Game contains the greatest surprise ending in the history of surprise endings. Ender’s Game.
For me, 4 stars out of 5 because the ending (after the surprise) is kind of weird. I can’t share anything about it without spoiling, so I’ll just say I didn’t feel perfectly satisfied at the end. But I’ll still recommend it, Ender’s Game really is a fantastic story.
Plus, I strongly recommend that once you’ve finished reading Ender’s Game, you jump right over to Ender’s Shadow. Instead of a sequel, it retells the same story, only from Bean’s point of view instead of Ender’s. It may sound gimmicky, but it works to great effect. For me, Ender’s Shadow is a 5 star book.
One Man Book Club 
8 responses to “#Ender’sGame: My Paradigm Has Shifted”
Five stars both books and the movie was good too on first book. Interesting this society used children to fight to war. I think the world would be a better place with children running governments. They have a profound sense of right and wrong and fairness and this is certainly more positive than being soldiers.
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Very insightful! I’m afraid though if we had children running things we might end up more like Lord of the Flies than Ender’s Game. Now, if we could find adults who where childlike in their compassion and sense of right and wrong, we might find we are on to something.
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ANOTHER POINT OF INTEREST IS THAT THE AUTHOR LIVES IN GREENSBORO, NC. I MOVED TO GREENSBORO FROM MIAMI 2 YEARS AGO. I SHOULD TRY TO LOOK HIM UP. INTERVIEW WOULD MAKE A GREAT POST.
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That would be great!
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I’ve wanted to read this for awhile…I really liked the movie and they left it open for a sequel which makes sense since it is a series. Are you planning on reading the other books too?
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Oh, please do read Ender’s Game! It’s really great. I loved it the first time I read it, but I obviously missed the point because when I immediately jumped into the second book, I found it boring and very odd. I never made it past the first chapter. My 7th grader was assigned Ender’s Game this week, so I buddy read it with him. Surprise! I love it now, but for different reasons. So I gave the next book a try and discovered I loved it too! I’m now reading book three.
After reading Ender’s Game previously, I did read Ender’s Shadow and the other 4 books in that series. I looked those as well. Ender’s Shadow tells the story of Ender’s Game, but from the POV of a different character, then the rest of the series follows the character’s back to Earth where they become military leaders of the world.
A long answer, but hopefully encouraging! Ender’s Game is a must read!
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I remain conflicted about this book. It’s a favorite of mine, but it is hard for me to separate the author’s personal beliefs and intolerance from his work… especially since they’re so at odds. Actually, he’s written several books I just LOVE. Ender’s Game always reads to me as a story about loving the other.
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Isn’t it interesting that a core theme of Ender’s Game is learning to understand those different than you so well you actually love them? That’s a universal message for our day, for sure.
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