Ender by Orson Scott Card

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Submitted by Eliot Jacobs 
(Sep 16, 2002)

The story of Ender Wiggin is simply overpowering. Ender's Game is of a rare breed of books that have the power to completly captivate you, no matter how many times you read it. Trying to read other books after Ender is like reading with the volume turned down, then you find Bean. Not the hot tempered, diminitive soldier that we meet in Ender's Game, but a superhuman boy genius, that has to live with the reality of being the most intelligent creature on earth.
If you were like me, the intensity of Ender's Game, made the idea of coming back into Ender's life after 20 years of change made Speaker a bit daunting. Reading Ender's Shadow, Hegemon, and now Shadow Puppets, allows you to watch Bean, Petra, Peter, and all the battle school brats grow up. Somthing we don't get with Ender. So, in reading about Bean after Ender's Game, it braces you to be thrust back into Ender's life, and gives you insight into the way a genius matures into an adult. The whole Saga of Ender, and Bean because I have grown partial to Bean and I refer to the Shadow books as the Bean Saga, is a look into the mind of a genius, and glimpse at what it is like to be superior in mind, and the burdens that comes with.
I love the Ender books, and think you will too. If you consider yourself a reader, it is mandatory, if you want to become a reader, it is the perfect spring board, and if your not a reader, then I feel very, very sorry that you do not have the privelege to meet Ender Wiggin, his friends, and his enemies.

This saga is the best series of books every written. They are very cleverly written and show that Orson Scott Card has a great knowledge of many cultures and he can write from the minds of many different people. The first book is like an individual story and then the next 3 are another story, but linked well, they all keep you wanting to keep reading, they are deffintly books that yout can not put down. I would highly recommend these books to everyone, especially the first book enders game. The final book is also a surperb ending to the saga. They are the greatest books ever written.

I was a bit biased towards science-fiction when my middle school librarian reccomended me to read Enders Game over the the weekend. Well, needless to say, the Monday I came back, I dove for Speaker for the Dead. I continued that way for about 3 weeks when I finished Enders Shadow (I forced myself to read slowly). Then I learned another had come out... Shadow of the Hegemon. I went to my bookstore and my luck was at its highest, the book was 70 percent off... so I bought it and donated it to my library.

Now, one year later, I have convinced almost ervyone I know to read at LEAST Enders Game. I could swear there was a list at my library (very long might I add) for people to rent that book. Everyone I knew from fantasy fans, horror fans, and even the people who hated reading picked up that book and read ferociously, even allowing themselves to be divulged so far into the book as to forget to do homework. My girlfriend, a complete anti-reader read Enders Game in ONE DAY. This just proves that Orson Scott Card IS one of THE best authors known to the world today. The Enders Game series is one of his best works (I DO wish that he would make either a full publication or even a movie of A MILLION DEATHS) and I visit his site every week for any sort of news about his next Ender book, which I believe to be entitled either Shadow of Valley or Shadow of the Giant, I forget which.

If you have not read this book, I implore you, make haste to your local library or bookstore AND GET IT!!!

Rarely have I enjoyed reading and rereading a novel or novels as often as I have the entire Ender series. (Now recently expanded!) OSC captures the rigors of isolationist military training and the implementation of small group tactics training masterfully. The underlying thread throughout the series is one of hope however. In the second and third novels of the original series, Ender becomes Speaker for the Dead as a form of atonement. It is the character development and believability that makes this series shine. While future pilots may be connected via neural nets, there will always be a need for small group tactical training especially for someone slated for strategic command - OSC captures the essence of this with repeated battle drill training. Novels recently released and outside of the original trilogy have even exceeded my expectations - a feat truly the rarest in sequels anywhere.

I write this with a heavy sense of post-book depression. I just finished Shadow of the Hegemon, the last (so far??) of the Ender Series, and I must say that it was completely consistent with my expectations. As was Ender's Shadow and Children of the Mind, and Xenocide and Speaker for the Dead. When I first read Ender's Game in 8th grade, I had to stop at the last few pages, because I didn't want it to end. I didn't pick it up for several years. I found that I could not bear that discipline with the rest of the series. Every single book after that, I devoured, as the children on the streets of Rotterdam devoured those last few morsels.. ever hungry for more. I, too, attribute the book Ender's Game, and those that followed, to my love of reading.