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| Review Summary |
Earth is being invaded my aliens called buggers. The military has been recruiting children of above the ordinary to attend battle school, in hope of saving humanity from extinction. Ender, the most brilliant of all, leaves Earth for battle school.
At battle school Ender is isolated, bullied, and alienated. He quickly moves into the a leader rank at an abnormally fast paste. Every rule the battle school had, is now being broken, not by the students, but by the teachers. Something is going terribly wrong, a leader is needed for the real army. Every student knows it. After Ender has learned everything battle school has to offer, he moves to command school. Then, finally, he meets someone who can outsmart him by every move, Mazer Rackham, his new teacher. Ender, then, battles in computer simulation with the help of his familiar friends from battle school. Day, after day, Ender battles the computer simulation, and day by day the computer is more difficult to defeat, learning every from every move he makes. Ender falls into deeper exhaustion. The final test that will reveal if Ender is right for the army begins. Ender feels as if nothing matters, he no longer cares about fighting with honor, any longer.
Katy Leung, Resident Scholar
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Alexander (Ender) Wiggin is the illegal third child (due to the rapidly increasing population of earth, each family is only allowed two children) of the Wiggin family, with older brother Peter and sister Valentine. He is only six at the beginning of the book. The first part of the book takes place on Earth, where certain young people are selected to train as space fighters. These young people have "monitors" implanted in the back of their necks, where the recruiting officers can monitor them from. When they reach a certain age (it varies from student to student) these monitors are removed. Depending on what the recruiters thought of the student, they are then taken to Battle School, a military base-like spaceship. Ender Wiggen starts the book with the monitor, but very soon has it removed, and is taken to Battle School.
The reason for training so early is that humankind expects an attack from the "buggers", green bug-like aliens that attacked in years past. Ender is trained by Colonel Graff. He is placed into a training squadron as soon as he arrives at Battle School. The squadrons have a normal routine, which consists of wake up, eat, and battle one another, eat, battle some more, train on the simulators (only for older, more experienced squadrons), eat, battle even more, and sleep. The battles were one of my favorite bits of the book. Each student was required to get into a large suit that, if hit by enemy fire, would freeze up. Ender soon invents and masters many techniques to be used in the battle room, earning the respect and hatred of many students. Ender is soon promoted to the leader of a squadron with many of his former "superiors" in it. They dominate the battle room, and Ender is once again promoted to Command School.
While this is going on, back on Earth, Peter has convinced Valentine that it is time for them to assert themselves. So they take on the guise of adults and, with the aid of the "net", start to assert their views. Soon, Peter attempts to take over the world.
Back in Command School, Ender meets Mazer Rackham, whose heroic charge defeated the second wave of buggers. He begins to train on the simulators.
Melissa Shauer, Resident Scholar
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At Battle School, the war games are everything to the kids at the school. Their lives revolve around playing those games, and so the meaning of the word itself shifts from a voluntary fun experience to a necessary and crucial aspect of life. Those games and their implications caused a fellow student, Bonzo's, death and created rancor and jealousy throughout the school. In the first invasion, the buggers, an alien species, had attacked Earth and devastatingly wiped out almost the whole population of the human species due to the Homo sapiens' lack of technology. Then in the second invasion, the buggers, yet again, severely decreased Earth's population, but not as much as the first. Now, it's the third invasion, and the humans aren't taking any more chances. Because of a deficiency of knowledge caused by the impossibility of communicating with another species, the humans are afraid that the buggers will destroy them. So in an act of fear, they decide to wipe out the buggers before the buggers can wipe the humans out. As a result, the international military forces are picking child geniuses to be the commander of the Third Invasion.
And who did they pick? Ender Wiggin, a boy whose brilliance never ceases to cause resentment. Ender Wiggin, the third in a family of child geniuses, was the chosen one. His older brother, Peter, who later controls the world, was not chosen for he was not compassionate enough while his older sister, Valentine, the later widely-known political writer, was not chosen for she was too compassionate. So naturally, Ender was the one. Each child chosen was to attend special schools in space to learn how to become the best possible leaders they can be. During Ender's remarkable progression through Battle School and Command School, he plays games that become debilitating to Ender's health. He can't sleep, he barely eats, and he is forced to be a leader and not a friend to those whom he cares for. Ender destroys the buggers because he wants the games to end for good, and he is successful, but if he had ever known that it was not a game he never would have participated.
Anita Poon, Resident Scholar
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Ender Wiggin is a five-year-old boy living on an Earth several decades in the future. His intelligence far surpasses that of his parents and schoolmates, and yet he is constantly tormented by both his classmates and his older brother, Peter. When offered the chance to go to the space-set Battle School, a school dedicated to training child geniuses to become military strategists in the upcoming war against the "Buggers," a vicious alien race, Ender jumps at the chance.
However, Ender doesn't know that by accepting this course, his life will go ways he can hardly imagine. In Battle School, Ender faces the same challenges he did at home...tormentors, struggles with his own identity, and the like. As Ender takes up these challenges, facing them as best he knows how, over it all looms the Battleroom, the focus of the Battle School itself. The children are divided into armies, forced to fight battles intermittently in the school, for schoolwide glory and experience. However, as the teachers steadily break the rules, pushing the game entirely out of its original proportions, Ender is forced to wonder if the Battle Room is just part of a game.
Melissa, Resident Scholar
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Ender Wiggen is a young genius, persecuted at school and beaten at home by his older brother Peter. When he is called up by the International Fleet to spend his childhood and adolesence trainging to save the world, the only thing Ender is sure of is that it can't be any worse. Ender spends the years studying war, tactics,and hand-to-hand,combat surpassing his peers, and even his superiors. In the end, Ender defeats the alien menece, saves the world, and becomes jaded with life. He has lost his innocence, defeated every obstacle, and bears the weight of having killed billions, two with his own hands. A classic story of innocence lost and self discovery.
Erik Crisanti, Resident Scholar
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Ender, a young genius is Earth's best and last chance to fight off the alien's that threaten human existence. The problem is Ender is only a child and first he has to get through the rigor's of a Battleschool (with it's weightless battleroom designed to prepare leaders), and the other students. Can Ender save humankind?
gardener, Resident Scholar
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This is one of my all time favorite novels. It is about a child named Andrew Wiggin, called Ender. It spans several years of his life showing us who and what he is, while showing us how he is trained at Battle School and Command School. The premise is simple, some years before aliens attacked humans and almost won. They are an insectoid race we call "buggers". The military is trying to train a battle commander for the fleet in space to save humankind from destruction. They watch Ender for some time, then take him to Battle School at age six and begin to educate, train and shape him into what they need. Ender is the best of the best. He is a genius, yet also a young child still. They alienate, test and push Ender to the very edge of his ability and sanity(in some ways). Next, they send him to Command School(much earlier than most go) and have him play simulations of controlling the fleet by computer and a new communication devise called an ansible(instantaneous communication regardless of distance). Toward the end they are pushing him so hard he is getting sick, having nightmares and hardly eating. Still they push him. On his final day in "command school" they give him a challenge so difficult Ender gets tired of the "adults" cheating by giving such difficult and overwhelming odds. He destroys the home planet of the enemy he is fighting in the "simulation". He is only eleven years old. BIG SPOILER AHEAD: At the end of the battle he discovers he has won the war with the buggers by destroying their entire race. He had been commanding the fleet for some time, thinking it was a simulation game. He has committed genocide without even realizing he was fighting. Everyone on earth wants to "control" the boy hero/genius that is Ender Wiggin. To keep from being used Ender must not return to Earth. Instead he departs on a colony ship destined for one of the empty bugger planets. The colony is successful and Ender discovers something interesting. He finds a cocoon with a queen bugger in a place the buggers designed for him. They had come to know him thru his dreams and spoke to him is the only ways they could. He takes the cocoon and carries it for many years from planet to planet, searching for a place the buggers can coexist safely with humankind........
Aimee, Resident Scholar
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Ender Wiggen is a six year old genius, goes to battle school in space to learn how to fight the buggers. He commands 40 children while he is there, they are forced to go to stage mock battles with each other. Some kids there hate him because he is so brilliant, he kills one of them in self defence. He is tricked at the age of 11 into destroying a entire species.
stacey, Resident Scholar
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Ethical dilemma. Ender Wiggin, a "third" or forbidden 3 child in a family, encompasses the traits of his brother, who was deemed to viloent and dangeroud, and sister, who was too compassionate and loving, thereby becoming recognized as the great hope for saving our race from alien invasion. Ender is a complete character, with an active conscious and generous spirit, yet driven to survive and succeed and prove to everyone that he is NOT just like his brother, while often forced to draw on that aspect of his personality, then retreat to the part of himself that is his sister for solace. Ender is a natural leader, with the traits of loyalty, fearlessness, or even better, controlled fear, uncertainty (he is, after all, a small boy), great courage, and, of course, thanks to his sister, a healthy dose of compassion. It is for this reason that he is duped into destroying another race we do not entirely understand, by being "trained" in the form of a game, that is all too real in life. Ender's game explores collective morality in conflict with individual morality, and gives another stunning argument for personal integrity, as is Card's hallmark. Ender must learn who he is, and then, cliche that it is, "learn thy (his) enemy", in order to defeat them. In doing so he also learns to have compassion for them, thereby leading to book 2, Speaker for the Dead. Ender's Game is more than a must-read. It is a must re- and re- and re-read.
C Todd, Resident Scholar
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The book Ender's Game is by far one of the best books I have ever read. The main character, Ender, is brought up to a military school out in the asteroid belt. He is trained to fight the upcoming war with an alien species. Even though this is what the book is based on, it doesn't play a major role. This is a book on how Ender deals with his problems and situations. A great read for any age.
Stephen Pendlebury, Resident Scholar
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Ratings are on a 1-10 scale (Low to High)
Plot
Composition of Book
Descript. of chases or violence - 30%
planning/preparing, gather info, debate puzzles/motives - 30%
Feelings, relationships, character bio/development - 30%
Descript. of society, phenomena (tech), places - 10%
Tone of book
- depressing/sad
FANTASY or SCIENCE FICTION?
- science fiction story
Coming of age
Yes
Youngster becomes
- great warrior
Training/Apprent.
Yes
Working up the ranks of...
- armed forces
If an invasion, from Earth/human POV:
- fighting overt invasion (attacking aliens)
War or Invasion
Yes
Major kinds of combat:
- lasers
Is this an adult or child's book?
- Adult or Young Adult Book
Main Character
Identity:
- Male
Profession/status:
- student
Age:
- a kid
Sense of humor
- Mostly serious with occasional humor
Intelligence
- Smarter than most other characters
- Genius
Setting
Spaceship setting:
- a space station
Takes place on Earth?
Yes
Takes place in spaceship?
Yes
Style
Person?
- mostly 3rd
Accounts of torture and death?
- moderately detailed references to deaths
How much dialogue?
- roughly even amounts of descript and dialog
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