Ender's Game and other books by Orson Scott Card

Hello,

What does everyone think of the book "Ender's Game"? I personally have just read it, and loved it.

The story is set in a futuristic world in which the earth has put together a battle school to train promising children from all cultures to become strategic commanders against a race of aliens known as the "Buggers".

The author seems to have a knack for portrarying religions and cultures very well, as well as the relationships between characters.I also loved the way the Buggers were so well developed, and not two-dimensional. The one thing I was put off by was the extreme arrogance of the author. In the end of the book on tape of one of his works, he spent fifteen minutes doing nothing but talking about how good his books are. Maybe he can get away with it though, seeing how many published books he has.

In the Ender series, there are at least five other books, but they aren't in a particular order, so I had to go online to figure out where each one happens in time.

Card also wrote the Red Prophet series, (seventh son) which IMO he never should have been able to get away with. What should have been two or three books ended up being seven.

So, what are your opinions about these books?

Ender's Game was a book I loved while reading it, but felt a little empty afterwards. Like candy, I suppose. The 'battle school' scenes are really awesome, but like action scenes in movies they don't give you those wonderful moments that really make a book. And the Locke/ Demosthenes scenes lost a little impact because it all felt a little contrived, like none of it could ever, ever happen. Maybe it was just because I was reading it as sort of an action book, I didn't really pick up a lot of social commentary stuff I know that's in there. But besides that, the whole book was fun and exciting but illogical and contrived at the same time. The 'game/ end of the world' thing in Ender's desk really pushed that beyond my limits, especially with how much emphasis it got.

And the relationships between the characters was okay but annoying. And aren't you supposed to like the main character in a book?

Plus, I'd like to kill the ending.

All in all, it just felt like the book was so fake and unrealistic that I couldn't relate to anything but the action scenes. So I enjoyed the book. But it definitely wasn't Earth shaking.

I loved this book. The sequels were okay, but they were a bit of a different animal from the original.

I loves me the Orson Scott Card. Not always the "best books evah", but I really do like reading them. Haven't read the Red Prophet series, but I read a few short stories set in its 'verse.

*shrugs* I approve.

Orson Scott Card is pretty damn fantastic. Ender's Game is absurdly good and to Critiq - just so you know, pretty much everything in Science Fiction, is never, ever going to happen, so I think it's pretty flimsy and odd for you to rate the book by that standard.

I don't have the time to go into just how great Ender's Game is, but I found out recently that the series has been badly ripped off by an Asian video game company, upon which an Anime was later based - so I was annoyed to find that out :p

Aside from that, I also found the Red Prophet (....is that the same as the Alvin the journeyman series?) to be enthralling. Just such a good writer, such a fantastic brand of surreal fiction in the genre today

Orson Scott Card is officially one of my favorite authors.

In fact, while I love Ender's Game, what is even more impressive is his book Speaker for the Dead which is its sequel. Speaker for the dead goes far deeper into the human mind. If you haven't read that, take a look at it.

Tales of Alvin Maker is awesome too, as is the Shadow saga.

Have a great one!

Jiggity wrote:Orson Scott Card is pretty damn fantastic. Ender's Game is absurdly good and to Critiq - just so you know, pretty much everything in Science Fiction, is never, ever going to happen, so I think it's pretty flimsy and odd for you to rate the book by that standard.

I know that. I was more referring to the dialogue/ ability for young kids to somehow change worldwide policy on the internet/ happy coincidences/ things that were totally pulled out of the hat from nowhere for plot's sake of the book. Even in sci-fi, things should somewhat make sense, eh?

I don't like alien/space books that much but I read that book last year and it's one of my favorite books of all time. It was well developed and very different. I haven't read the following books, although I tried reading the 2nd book for awhile, but it was very advanced and confusing. If you thought that was good you should definitely read "Ender's Shadow", which is Ender's Game written in Bean's point of view. They even have a whole part of the book about his life before Battle School and it's very interesting. I haven't finished it yet, but so far it's very good!