Somewhere near the end of the last year I rediscovered my passion for SF books, and since I had no author in mind to start with, I searched on Google for top 100 SF books. The search directed me, among other sites, to this one, which is by far one of the best collections of SF media, organized by user votes. I also found this one, but the first one got my attention being much more organized and also providing reviews and book comments.
This way, after finishing Frank Herbert, Dune I started reading “Ender’s Game” (published in 1985), by Orson Scott Card (well not really “after”, since in between them I enjoyed Time out of joint by Philip K. Dick). However, I am planning to devour book by book from the aforementioned top 100 SF book list.
Spoilers ahead, not suited for those that haven’t read the book.
Ender’s Game and Harry Potter
I haven’t read Harry Potter, by J.K. Rowling (first book published in 1997). Not because I didn’t had the time, or because I didn’t had the opportunity to get the books, but simply because I didn’t liked the way the books were written. However I did see the movies, read comments and reviews of the books, so I am aware of the plot and the characters. That’s why when reading Ender’s Game I got the strange feeling that the story is somehow related to the little-wizard books.
The book is full of action, so there isn’t really much time to get bored or to analyze the situation, the characters or the decision taken for various actions. We are introduced in the current situation of the Earth, as it is on the edge of a third attack from an alien race. The army has just lost one of the great generals it had, which defeated the alien army in the second encounter. Now they are looking for a boy to be trained to become the next great general that will lead the human armies against the alien race in the third battle for protecting the blue planet. This way a handful of world’s most talented children are taken from the Earth and transported to the Battle School Space Station in order to train them for the battles with the aliens. Among these children we can find the main character of the book, the six-year old Andrew “Ender” Wiggin.
This little boy proves to be extraordinary, managing to quickly advance the training levels. At the same time, more and more students start to hate him, and the troubles start to appear (as if the training session weren’t exhausting enough and the life without his parents and beloved sister hard and difficult to bare).
After being promoted to the last classes of the Battle School, he meets the retired general that almost defeated the alien race during the second encounter. The general, Mazer Rackham, begins a completely different series of exercises with Ender, in which the boy gets the support of his colleagues and friends from the previous classes that he attended. A very nice first twist of the events happens in the end, when the author reveals the fact that the games that Ender was playing were actually real attacks lead by the human army against the alien race and their space ships. The second twist is plotted by the author just when you think that everything will end in a happy manner, as you discover that the aliens never meant to attack the humans, that the first attack was simply an attempt from their side to discover new civilizations, and that all they wanted was to be left alone.
Therefore, the victory that everyone was fighting for proves to be a genocide, in which all the alien bugs find their end.
As I said in the beginning, this book reminds me of the Harry Potter series (without considering this a bad thing). Here we have the same extraordinary boy, that fights to save the world. The fate is not very gentle with him, and several of his colleagues and teachers are against him. Moreover, we have the Battle School that trains talented children to become capable leaders in the fight against the alien bugs. He proves to be superior to all his colleagues, and in the end he succeeds in accomplish his goal and save the planet.
Overall the book is a pleasure to read, without any difficult or boring moments. As the reader progresses in the book, he or she gets more and more emotionally attached to boy Ender, and there is even a moment in the book when the boy is so tired and exhausted after so many battles and games played in the training rooms, that you could almost feel his desire for a moment of peace, for a complete night of sleep, for a Sunday in the true meaning of the word.
