Book Review on Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

Review by Emily Northcraft

Author: Orson Scott Card

Genre: Science Fiction

Summary

The classic science fiction story Ender's Game written by Orson Scott Card is a great read.  This novel is about a young boy who goes by the name Andrew 'Ender' Wiggin.  It tells the tale of Ender growing up as a child who is mentally tortured, isolated, and sent away from his parents due to the government's oppressive reign.

The main character goes by the nickname Ender.  Weird name, right?  Anyway...

Ender is a boy genius.  Unfortunately, he is a third.  What is a third?  ... That is a good question!  The Government, being an oppressive group, wanted to limit the population, due to the war with the 'buggers'.  Families are only allowed to have two children. Special permission from the government is required to have more than two children, which is very rare to achieve.  Third, or third child, is a very nasty title.

Ender's parents were given permission to have a third child mainly deals with the war with the buggers.  The 'Buggers' are an insectoid alien species.  The government is anticipating a Third Invasion from their rivals, who had attacked before.  A twist in the book, spoiler warning, is that the buggers never intended to attack again, after realizing the human species is not a lame group that they could easily overcome.  This can be seen literally in the book within the discussion between Ender and Colonel Graff:
"Ender, we didn't go to them first, they came to us. If they were going to leave us alone, they could have done it a hundred years ago, before the First Invasion."

"Maybe they didn't know we were intelligent life. Maybe—" (Card 178)

This quote shows that Ender is beginning to understand the government and their reign of control.

Back to thirds.  The reason Ender was even authorized to be born was because of his older brother and sister.  His brother, Peter, is an incredibly intelligent person, which is what the government wants in children so that they could help lead them to victory in the war.  Problem is, Peter may or may not be a complete blood-thirsty sociopath... More or less.
Ender's sister, Valentine, is also fairly intelligent, but is way too mild and sweet for the government.
They allowed the birth of Ender so they could have a perfect combination of both his siblings, enabling that he could become the perfect war general.

Now that you know the critical points within the novel.  Be warned, I may ramble confusingly, but what can you do?
Children, when first born, get what they call a 'monitor' on the back of their neck that they live with until completing or failing the government's program.  The purpose of the monitor is that the government and their officials are able to monitor the child's every thought and feeling.  If a child passes their little tests, the child's monitor is removed and they could be sent into space to enter a training program that will shape them into perfect war generals.
They are sent to the next best location, compared to prison!  They are sent to Battle School, which is a space program that teaches them advanced battle methods and puts them through miniature fights/battles that teach them war tactics and strategic skills necessary to be the proper war general.  Once, or if, you finish Battle School, you are sent to Command School, which is an advanced and more in-depth Battle School.
I would like to add, last-minute, that the monitor is forced to be implemented among new-borns.
Believe it or not, the main character and protagonist of the story may or may not be the big hero of the novel.  No spoilers!

That is basically the main idea of the story, without telling large spoilers or parts of the novel itself.  I guess you will just have to read it to find out.  Keep in mind that I left a large portion of the novel and its summary out so that I could talk about more subjects, but feel free to read a more in-depth summary, like from the source: http://www.shmoop.com/enders-game/summary.html
Or feel free to check out SparkNotes!  This link will save both of us some time.  Now it's time for me to get to my main point.  Yay!

Opinion On The Book

I personally believe that this is a very amazing story.  I think that the plot is very creative and in-depth.  Though it is not within the range of my usual genre choice, I could easily say that this book would be something that I would definitely read again.
Now, related to the worse part of my opinion...  I think that some of the parts of this book were a tad sloppy, but overall very good.  The end seems like it was thrown together without much thought, but that is a very vague judgement on my part.
Overall, this book was very original in all of its thoughts and a very good novel I enjoyed taking the time to read.

Who Should Read This Book

I would suggest this book for teenagers who enjoy a very in-depth and emotional read.  This book is very original, and any person who enjoys a good science fiction novel would definitely have a great time skimming the pages of this fantastic novel.  I would reserve this book for teenagers and older because some of the content could be seen as confusing to younger readers.

How It Relates To Our Theme

Now that you understand the novel, let's begin with the subject that I would like to address.
The theme that my little group of friends and I decided to focus on is the cruelties of society and how the government controls everything.

My point would be that the government is highly oppressive and controlling of basically everything...but that is common knowledge.  Like I had said near the beginning of the review,  the buggers never intended to attack a third time.  Eighty years had past since the last assault, and the government decided to rekindle the fire, for a lack of a better metaphor.  As you can see from the quote near the beginning of the blog, Ender can understand how the government is too controlling.
The government is also only controlling and forcing the third war so that the citizens of Earth will remain terrified of the buggers and more war will not break out between the countries.  Since the government realizes this, there is no need for them to kidnap and torment young children and take away their freedom.  The government, as bad as it sounds, could just continue with their false stories about the bugger war while still continuing to have peace among the surface.  All without the terrorizing of children.  Citizens are forced to remain ignorant of these facts.
The government can be seen sending children to space so that they can learn how to kill an entire species.  They trade the children's education for war tactics.  In some cases, in order to see a child at their breaking point, they will isolate the child so they are driven to near insanity, with the hopes it will make them a better person.

Movie Review

I watched the movie before I read the book.  Sadly, I do have a few complaints about the novel and movie.

When I first saw the movie, I thought it was incredibly good, and I was excited to read the novel.  Disappointingly, after reading the novel, I did not enjoy the ending of the novel, and the movie was forever ruined for me.  This is a slight exaggeration to show my discontent with how the novel and movie work together.  The author of the book didn't even get any money or say in the movie!  How messed up is that!

Anyway, I think that the book and the movie are pretty similar, for the most part.  It has been a while since I have seen the movie, and I have no way to access it, so my judgement is purely what I believe is my memory.  I looked the movie's soundtrack up, because I remember enjoying it, so I'll let you listen and enjoy, too!  Check it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brIkzQaaNz4

If my memory serves me correctly, I do think I can point out some differences between the book and the movie.

One difference is the game that Ender plays on his "desk".  The movie changed the game up quite a bit.  For one thing, after he kills the giant within the game, he does not see his sister in the book.  In the book, it sends him to another set of puzzles and gut-retching situations for him to go through.  In the movie, once he kills the giant, he sees his sister, who in then leads him to the nest of the 'Bugger Queen'.

Also, the age progression in the book and movie are much different.  In the book, Ender first leaves when he is at the age of six, and then the book progresses until his is a young adult.  In the movie, we basically only see Ender at the age of a teenager for the majority of the movie.

The movie cuts out an incredibly large portion of the book that regards a huge conspiracy with Peter and Valentine, Ender's siblings.  I will not spoil what they took out because it is a very good plot within the main plot of the book.  Keep in mind, cutting this part of the book out means that they had to majorly change the end of the movie since the plot they cut out of the movie leads into the end of the novel.

These are all of the differences that I am going to note, considering that I have gone way past the word count limit on this blog entry.  Sorry about that, teach!