Rating: 
Summary: I liked this book so much....
Review: -I ran to the store and bought it.
-Read it more than twenty times.
-Collected the whole series.
Rating:
Summary: The Internet reaching maturity is a much neglected subplot
Review: OK, first I have to explain the 9. I'm from the midwest, no one and nothing is a ten. Let's say it's a 9+.
It's been five or more years since I read this great book. After reading it, I immediately went out in search of (and read) its sequels "Speaker For the Dead" and "Xenocide". That in itself is a tribute to my appreciation of this book.
Andrew Wiggin (aka Ender) is (like me) a player of games. He plays games so well, that he becomes the Earth's greatest military genius. But is this a good thing?
Ender's brother and sister are similar to him, but not militarily oriented. They become Earth's greatest POLITICAL genius. (The singular noun here is intentional. Read the book.)
The book focuses on Ender and his exploits in learning to save the human race from extinction at the hands of the alien race known as the buggers, but a critical subplot is what his brother and sister accomplish here on Earth using what the Internet has matured into. Mind you, this book was written before the Internet became a household word.
Ender has been engineered (more or less) to destroy the buggers, but he is still a human, and he must learn to live with what he is. He sees his brother as evil, but the evil in his brother is the good in him.
This book is filled with similar contradictions. In essence, the author paints a picture of humanity and forces the reader to decide whether this is good, or bad. Then, as if that's not enough, he gives the reader a mirror image of that picture, and requires another decision; good or bad?
You decide.
But before you make your final decision, you might want to read the sequels...Speaker for the Dead, and Xenocide.
Enjoy.
Rating: 
Summary: The best and worst of fiction
Review: The reviewers of this book overqualify it out of emotional impact, or underqualify it as a way to express some hateful revenge for the high marks received. The book is not the best literature, but it is one of the best. However, the full impact of the story cannot be felt until reading Speaker For the Dead; that is another subject.
Emotional appeal is what makes this book above any books of equal magnitude. Any book that can touch the hearts and lives of an audience "years" after reading it has to be a force dealt with. There is something deeper than a misunderstood boy in these pages. It is a representation of mankinds inner fears of rejection. It is a story of men trapped in the bodies and perceptions of boys.It is the story of survival, not of the physical, but of the emotional.Card doesn't sugar coat "The innocence and ignorance of childhood" to remind us how hard being a human (child or adult)really is. Only through the uncovered eyes of a child could irony be examined. Only the mind of an adult (as some have blamed the book contains too much of) can have the experience to express what is found. To have children act as children would have rendered this a childs book. To use only adults as characters would have diluted the impact of the simple truths expressed, because adults seem to want everything complex. To have made the book hard science fiction would have kept it forever genre specific. The audience who reads it would have been smaller.
The reason I don't give the book a ten is there is flaws. Those flaws, however, are because Card is also a human. The flaw is how simplistic the story is. Yet, if we look at the simplicstics of the story, it is one of the great achievements. It is a book for the masses. Not just for science fiction lovers, but those who don't read sci-fi at all. There is little "special volcabulary" and complex structure that might destroy the simple honesty of the book. these "flaws" allow the book to touch the lives of ordinary people- not just "high-brow" critics and strict Sci-Fi fans.
Rating:
Summary: I found it extremely difficult to put this book down.
Review: I found it extremely difficult to put this book down. From the onset this book is a gripping tale
of a boy who is forced into manhood by circumstances. Ender is truly somebody who has
shown that he can handle adversity and come out
on top.
Rating:
Summary: Gripping and mind-blowing...Card's writing is addictive!
Review: Orson Scott Card elevates himself to the ranks of greatness with Ender's Game. It is a deceptively simple tale yet unfolds like a flower to reveal layers of psychological complexity. This marriage of artistic prose and scientifically sound motivational studies of human behavior place this work in the realm of Shakespeare. I hesitate to add that even The Bard might be jealous of Card's skills here; especially after reading the sequel, Speaker for the Dead, or the Tales of Alvin Maker Trilogy: Seventh Son, Red Prophet, and Prentice Alvin (collected as 'Hatrack River').
Orson Scott Card once headed a Shakespearean troupe in Salt Lake City. His failure there is literature's great gain, for he has truly elevated the status of his type of speculative fiction to the ranks of the great literature of history.
Rating:
Summary: A masterful combination of action, suspense, and irony.
Review: Books are much like television or movies. It takes watching 10 to find 1 that's any good. This is one of the "1's". The number of reviews on this book is a fitting testament to this work. While I have just finished reading it for the first time, there's no doubt I'll be reading it again. My only regret is that I didn't read the book many years earlier. If you're a fan of science fiction, don't make the same mistake. Read it now
Rating: 
Summary: manipulative and reprehensible
Review: I know I'm in the minority here, but I couldn't stand "Ender's Game." Orson Scott Card sets up the big, bad Earthlings as the villains here, starting a war with the poor victimized Buggers over a misunderstaning. Yes, the humans don't understand the Buggers, but Card doesn't play fair with his readers--there's no way that the humans could possibly understand! And the Buggers commit at least one massacre themselves before the outbreak of war because they don't understand either. I appreciate Card's point that "different is not necessarily bad," but reading this book is like viewing a politically correct new exhibit at the Smithsonian--for example, the USA is now the bad guy for nuking poor Japan, never mind that nobody asked Japan to sieze land all over the Pacific or attack Pearl Harbor. Humanity isn't fighting fair in Ender's war, and Card is a good enough writer to make you feel bad about this unless you stop and think. Why take extra casualties by fighting fair? As one writer put it (in a magazine almost 40 years ago) "you can't keep a good man down, unless of course he limits himself to acting like a good man."
If I had read it during the Vietnam War, when my draft number was 147, I would have loved "Ender's Game." That war has been over for more than 20 years. There are legitimate wars, and "Ender's Game" is noxious but very well written junk.
Rating:
Summary: Ender's Game -- Blueprint for the future?
Review: The opening to this science fiction shows a frantic earth trying to save itself from aliens (aka "buggers"). The novel develops from an idea that rearing children to play games can save the earth from ultimate destruction. The earth is unified in this novel to defend and destroy the aliens. One senses that this is a tenuous aliance with differing factions jockeying for propaganda dominance and the right to rule after the "Third Invasion." The story progresses along a narrative of Ender Wiggin's training for command and combat. There are strange twists and turns in this wonderfully written science fiction.
There are many underlying themes and levels of understanding developed alongside this interesting and unfolding story. One level is the story itself. Others discuss philosophical and political questions. How much of life is a game? In chess there is an endgame strategy, and so it is fitting that Card names his book, Ender's Game. Can children be taken from their parents and developed into fighting machines incapable of affection or emotion without appropriate consequences? The novel pits emotions with missions and purpose and the sacrifice of youth for the survival of society. How much will it impact humankind is discussed but not fully developed or concluded. Overall, the book poses questions about life, training and education and the importance that kinship, friendships and relationships play in the development of the whole person. I read the novel at several levels and appreciated the author's intellectual challenge.
Rating:
Summary: One of the All-Time Greats!!!!
Review: Simply one of the Very best Sci-Fi books ever written. I have re-read this book about five times and each time I discover new and exciting things. I am now on my fifth copy because friends borrow and never seem to return it! Which is fine by me because I want the whole world to discover what a joy this book truly is
Rating:
Summary: Ender's Game: The best there is, the best there ever will be
Review: Ever read a book where you say "Okay, I'm gonna read to chapter three, and stop" but when you get there, it's like the book has hypnotised you, and you keep on reading...reading...reading...and before you know it you've finished it? Ender's Game is one such book. From beginning to climactic end, Orson Scott Card holds you in his grip, preventing you from leaving the mini-universe he creates in your mind. When a book is written in this style that only makes you ravenous for more, who cares about little things like vocabulary, literary techniques, and grammatical perfection? This is the basic concept of what makes reading books such as these fun.
What makes Ender's Game so dynamic? First of all, Card uses precise language that gets straight to the point. Second of all there is a huge difference in the standards of our culture and Ender's that makes Ender's Game an extremely compelling book. Third, the tension and suspense is brought up to an almost unbearable level, until the ending comes. And believe me, it (the ending) won't dissapoint. Lastly, the plot itself is unprecedentedly superb in structure and originality.
If you don't read Ender's Game, you do yourself a great injustice. It is a great book, and should be remembered throughout literary history.
(by Jonathan Barchas)
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