Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card

As a child I never really read 'young adult' fiction. I went straight from reading kids books to reading Lonesome Dove, Jurassic Park and Stephen King novels. In middle school I even had an English teacher that would question my reading list for the journal entries we were to write for class. Mr. Hillenburg wrote 'this book might be inappropriate, do your parents know you're reading this' in my first Lonesome Dove journal entry. I didn't always know what was going on in these books because of technical or adult issues (especially my first few times through Jurassic Park) but I sure enjoyed reading them.

I bring this up not to say that Ender's Game is young adult fiction, but the book was originally described to me as the 'perfect book for a 13 year old boy' and after reading it I can agree that this is indeed the case. It may be a little violent at times but it's action packed, quick paced and virtually all of the main characters are between the ages of 6 and 14.

The Ender in Ender's Game refers to the main character, a boy who gets picked at the age of 6 to join the illustrious Battle School. Battle School is necessary, as we learn throughout the book, because there is an ongoing intergalactic war between humans and an alien race only called the 'buggers'. We eventually learn that in the past hundred years there have been two major conflicts with the buggers and humanity lives constantly under the threat of another possible bugger invasion attempt. Because of this climate, children are taken at a very young age and trained to become the soilders of the future.

Although the bugger war could have been a rich source for wide reaching plot lines, the novel mostly focuses around Ender's personal development in battle school and how the bugger war relates to him and those he knows. Battle school is mostly a training ground for soldiers, teaching them battle tactics instead of traditional academic studies. They do have classes on things other than battles, but as the story goes on it becomes clear that the only thing that matters are what the kids learn about war.

The kids are all separated into teams (which is slightly reminiscent of the houses in Harry Potter) and then are pitted against each other in play battles every week or so. They battle in a zero gravity room (the school itself is a space station that has gravity elsewhere in the building) with fake guns and flashsuits that simulate real battles by freezing the kids if they get shot. The students start out as scrubs, and as they grow and mature become they become platoon leaders or commanders of entire teams.

Although we never really learn why, Ender is a an especially gifted child and is considered by the army leaders to be the future commander of the army and the savior in the war on the buggers. The teachers and military staff constantly put him in situations that will shape him into the future military leader of Earth. They isolate him by pointing out how great he is and getting the other students to turn on him, and by constantly testing him with unfair battle conditions as he quickly makes his way up the ranks.

Much of Ender's Game is concerned with how an almost superman like person deals with adversity and the knowledge that the future of humanity rests with him. You don't often hear of stories that focus around someone who has an ingrained superiority to all those around him, and how he uses that to fulfill his destiny. Ender does often whine that he is being treated unfairly, and yearns to be just 'one of the gang' , but these are more often passing feelings that are quickly replaced with thoughts of how he can overcome his current situation and how he can beat those around him. In fact Ender never loses a battle in the whole book! He overcomes adversity to be sure, but he is never truly tested.

Because of this, one could mistakenly believe that Card is trying to promote the idea of the superman, akin to Hitler's master race. This would be a mistake because despite all of his superior gifts and ability to implement them, Ender never truly desires to be a despot. Even when he crushes his enemies he never intends to hurt them, and is often concerned with their safety above all else. He may be a superior man, but he never acts arrogant and doesn't want to control those around him.

You may have noticed that despite saying that the book started when Ender was 6 I have been talking about him like he is a full grown man. The characters are mostly children, but they are written and act like adults. Part of this I think rests on the inability of Card to correctly write a child, but I think he is also making the point that these children are so special they have the advanced mind of an adult. Also as Ender grows up in the battle school he ages much more quickly than his contemporaries.

Because I knew this book was a series I was kind of fooled by the twist at the end. As stated before, the majority of the book concerns the battle games kids play in the special school. In the last quarter of the book Ender graduates and starts his training to become the future army commander. They give him a new game that involves him commanding fleets and ships in what looks like a video game simulation. I figured that the book would end with Ender assuming command of the fleet and the subsequent books would be about his epic war against the buggers.

In the climax of the book, we see Ender enter a room to complete his final simulation in frontt of the military officials. Everyone acts as if this were like an oral qualifier for grad school. Ender faces seemingly impossible odds in the simulation and through his cleverness and ruthlessness he cruses the simulated bugger army and destroys their entire fleet. Everyone in the room celebrates and Ender is confused by how jubilant they seem over his passing of the exam.He then learns that it was not a simulation at all and that for quite some time Ender had actually been controlling the Earth's fleet! They used a talented child who thought he was just playing games to destroy and entire race not only because of his abilities, but also because he would have no qualms about sacrificing his own virtual ships or cruelly obliterating the enemy.

I felt a little foolish for not seeing this coming but as I stated before I was slightly tricked by knowing this was a many book series, but let's not to take anything away from Card's ability to write a riveting story. I'm not sure if I'll read anything else in the series, this book actually wraps up pretty well and easily stands on its won, but I quite enjoyed Ender's Game and would definitely recommend it to my 13 year old self.