Milskidasith reviews Ender's Game, and makes use of titles that probably got more people looking at his review than a bland but more informative title would (IE newspaper headline style).
Ender?s game is a novel written by Orson Scott Card set a few decades or centuries into the future (It?s never really clear on this as far as I can tell). The basic concept for the setting is that, through a bunch of unexplained treaties and various factions, the world is entirely at peace in order to unite against an alien threat, the buggers. Ender, the protagonist, is a kid who is somewhere between his murderous brother and his totally nonviolent sister. He gets chosen to go to Battle School, a floating space station built to train kids to be commanders of the army designed to protect humanity from the Third Bugger Invasion.
And right here is where I started having some slight problems with the book. Besides the total lack of immersion in the world up to this point, we now have the entire launch of kids going to Battle School acting like stereotypical bullies. They seem to act dumb and stupid, yet all of them apparently passed tests that showed they had shocking levels of knowledge on psychoanalyzing people, had high general intelligence, and knew how to command. But they generally act dumb for the rest of the book, and have paper thin, if any, motivations for being jackasses.
Even the side characters important enough to have names barely have any character development, and all seem to fit into the ?nice but exceedingly skillful soldier? mold, which just makes things worse. Of course, it all seems to fit when we consider that Ender himself is a Mary Sue, a character who has near godlike abilities in every aspect that would be important to the story, and has the plot entirely revolve around him. Every storyline event has him at its center, and every time anything changes in the school it is solely done by the administration in order to make him feel more miserable, more alone, and more detached from others so that he would be prepared to sacrifice soldiers when he commanded the International Fleet against the Buggers.
The book isn?t all bad, though. Sometimes Card manages to be genuinely clever about the next way to screw Ender over, and at the very least Ender?s personality is pretty well done, though since he is the focal point of the story it would be a pretty awful book if it wasn?t. The problem is, while individually segments may be good, even brilliant, when put together they just don?t work well. What annoyed me most was the fact Ender realized at least five times that the adults were screwing with him and they shouldn?t be trusted, yet in a fight he knew would be to the death his first thought is that the adults will save him.
Another notable example is Ender?s brother Peter who was, as I previously described, a vicious and evil person, who wanted the world to have peace. It?s somewhat justified that he wanted to be ruler of the world, but as far as the book bothers to describe anything it seems like, instead of using the power he desired to further himself, the world appears to be peaceful and well ruled, instead of what you would expect, a rule by a leader who wielded near God-like power over his subjects. Another thing I couldn?t fathom was why the Battle School would take 10 year olds into it instead of 14 or 15 year olds, where they could have the general amount of time in it and be fully developed adults instead of little kids who could not, as far as the book was concerned, think up any cleverer insults than ?fart eater.?
I?ve ragged on about the characters a lot, so I?m sure you guys are trying to figure out more about the plot. Well, it?s not hard to find out about the plot. Everything in the plot is tiresomely predictable, and the message of the story is pounded into your skull like a stake into the ground often enough you just know it?s going to repeat again in the next ten or twelve pages. The main messages seem to be violence isn?t good but is sometimes necessary, being smart is more important than being strong, and that friendship can beat even the greatest evils, and they just never cease to be repeated by some barely unique event that happens. I could probably describe the plot of the book in more detail than that, but really, that?s all you need. If you read the book and can?t guess the next major plot event, you probably skipped the page where Card practically told you what it was going to be.
Now, to sum things up, Ender?s Game is a bad book for what it tries to be. It tries to have a deep main character, but, while he has a somewhat well done personality, he just has no real faults and you just can?t sympathize with him. It also tries to have good life messages that, while sometimes not pretty, are helpful, but the repetitiveness of them weakens any impact they may have had. But the book does manage to be good for what it was not trying to be, and that is a somewhat darker than usual ?soft? sci-fi book that is great for if you want some quick light reading or need a good book to recommend to a child around age eleven or twelve. I made a lot of harsh points about the book, but those points only matter when you try to read the book for what it wants to be. Like an Adam Sandler comedy, if you just sit back, relax, and take it for what it is, it?s good, if not great, but if you try to take it for what it tries to be, you are in for a huge disappointment.
Ender?s game is a novel written by Orson Scott Card set a few decades or centuries into the future (It?s never really clear on this as far as I can tell). The basic concept for the setting is that, through a bunch of unexplained treaties and various factions, the world is entirely at peace in order to unite against an alien threat, the buggers. Ender, the protagonist, is a kid who is somewhere between his murderous brother and his totally nonviolent sister. He gets chosen to go to Battle School, a floating space station built to train kids to be commanders of the army designed to protect humanity from the Third Bugger Invasion.
And right here is where I started having some slight problems with the book. Besides the total lack of immersion in the world up to this point, we now have the entire launch of kids going to Battle School acting like stereotypical bullies. They seem to act dumb and stupid, yet all of them apparently passed tests that showed they had shocking levels of knowledge on psychoanalyzing people, had high general intelligence, and knew how to command. But they generally act dumb for the rest of the book, and have paper thin, if any, motivations for being jackasses.
Even the side characters important enough to have names barely have any character development, and all seem to fit into the ?nice but exceedingly skillful soldier? mold, which just makes things worse. Of course, it all seems to fit when we consider that Ender himself is a Mary Sue, a character who has near godlike abilities in every aspect that would be important to the story, and has the plot entirely revolve around him. Every storyline event has him at its center, and every time anything changes in the school it is solely done by the administration in order to make him feel more miserable, more alone, and more detached from others so that he would be prepared to sacrifice soldiers when he commanded the International Fleet against the Buggers.
The book isn?t all bad, though. Sometimes Card manages to be genuinely clever about the next way to screw Ender over, and at the very least Ender?s personality is pretty well done, though since he is the focal point of the story it would be a pretty awful book if it wasn?t. The problem is, while individually segments may be good, even brilliant, when put together they just don?t work well. What annoyed me most was the fact Ender realized at least five times that the adults were screwing with him and they shouldn?t be trusted, yet in a fight he knew would be to the death his first thought is that the adults will save him.
Another notable example is Ender?s brother Peter who was, as I previously described, a vicious and evil person, who wanted the world to have peace. It?s somewhat justified that he wanted to be ruler of the world, but as far as the book bothers to describe anything it seems like, instead of using the power he desired to further himself, the world appears to be peaceful and well ruled, instead of what you would expect, a rule by a leader who wielded near God-like power over his subjects. Another thing I couldn?t fathom was why the Battle School would take 10 year olds into it instead of 14 or 15 year olds, where they could have the general amount of time in it and be fully developed adults instead of little kids who could not, as far as the book was concerned, think up any cleverer insults than ?fart eater.?
I?ve ragged on about the characters a lot, so I?m sure you guys are trying to figure out more about the plot. Well, it?s not hard to find out about the plot. Everything in the plot is tiresomely predictable, and the message of the story is pounded into your skull like a stake into the ground often enough you just know it?s going to repeat again in the next ten or twelve pages. The main messages seem to be violence isn?t good but is sometimes necessary, being smart is more important than being strong, and that friendship can beat even the greatest evils, and they just never cease to be repeated by some barely unique event that happens. I could probably describe the plot of the book in more detail than that, but really, that?s all you need. If you read the book and can?t guess the next major plot event, you probably skipped the page where Card practically told you what it was going to be.
Now, to sum things up, Ender?s Game is a bad book for what it tries to be. It tries to have a deep main character, but, while he has a somewhat well done personality, he just has no real faults and you just can?t sympathize with him. It also tries to have good life messages that, while sometimes not pretty, are helpful, but the repetitiveness of them weakens any impact they may have had. But the book does manage to be good for what it was not trying to be, and that is a somewhat darker than usual ?soft? sci-fi book that is great for if you want some quick light reading or need a good book to recommend to a child around age eleven or twelve. I made a lot of harsh points about the book, but those points only matter when you try to read the book for what it wants to be. Like an Adam Sandler comedy, if you just sit back, relax, and take it for what it is, it?s good, if not great, but if you try to take it for what it tries to be, you are in for a huge disappointment.
