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Shvoong Home>Books>Science Fiction & Fantasy>TOP 1000 BEST BOOKS EVER: Ender's Game Summary

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TOP 1000 BEST BOOKS EVER: Ender's Game

Book Review by: Menelmacar     

Original Author: Orson Scott Card
  • Summary rating: 5 stars (3 Ratings)
  • Visits : 641
  • words:600 
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          What would life be without GAMES? Are there any
unbeatable OBSTACLES for a bunch of brilliant kids, playing, competing and creating? What's the price any of us must pay to really LEARN? Three of the many questions that receive an outstanding answer in this brilliant work of Orson Scott Card.
        First novel of Ender's Saga, Ender's Game, introduce us in a really close future situation, when mankind faces a true challenge. Expanding in space we got in contact with a very different form of life, "The Buggers", which are true intelligent creatures, but not able to communicate with us, barely seeming to be bothered by our presence. We find out that two attempted Buggers invasions were stopped by a brilliant strategist, Mazer Rackham and we are preparing to face the third. How? By discovering, gathering and preparing all the planet's great minds, in the art of a seemingly impossible to win war. Those little kids are our future. Those kids are our only hope. Of course, we cannot burden them with knowledge of their responsibility. They seem only to prepare for a great military career and an important role in distant war.
        That's the background in which 6 year old Andrew Wiggin appears, as little brother of Peter Wiggin and of Valentine Wiggin, an uncommon third born, in a family of religious people. He strikes out with his haunting wish to win every kind of an unavoidable conflict in a definitive style, once and for all. He is taken away from home to the Battle School, a space structure orbiting the Earth. He is always put in complete emotional isolation from other kids in Battle School. He gets to play and win an impossible fantasy video game. He turns all the rules of the strategy learning games, upside down, by always winning. So, he's given more and more unapproachable tasks. As the youngest commander of an training formation, The Dragon Army, he's not only winning all the fights, but he's preparing the best possible students, combining creativity, persistence, iron will and ... and an utterly loneliness, that almost puts him down.
        After six years of training, he gets to Command School, where it is trained by the only Fleet Commander that has ever beaten the Buggers, Mazer Rackham. Employing a beautiful mind and a will of spirit comparable only to a solid diamond, he keeps on winning every single fight. Even when he has the least resources. Even when his training fleet makes mistakes. Even when he's outnumbered 1000:1 as in the Final Battle! Until, faced with the same question that keeps on reappearing in the novel, how to win not only a battle, but the whole war against a much more stronger opponent, gives the same answer by total annihilation! By reaping his opponent of any chance to ever retaliate!
       Why is the book so brilliant? There are so many possible answers. The genius of Orson Scott Card enriches his characters with a remarkable intelligence. This novel contains so many simple life truths, so many sound solving problems hints, so much feeling, communication and psychology, that you could read it as a development book as well. The catch is that we learn from the children, from their seemingly innocent games, from the way they look up to act and react as adults. You could almost quote the entire book as a history lesson, as a sociology experiment and as a fabulous tale. It's your point of view. The beauty in your eyes! I bet that every one of you will shed at least one tear! Read it!
Published: July 15, 2007
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