Enders shadow how many pages

Get A Copy. Published September 30th by Tor first published More Details Original Title. Edwards Award Other Editions Friend Reviews. To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. To ask other readers questions about Ender's Game , please sign up.

If you're trying to get into some good old fashion bigoted science fiction writing is this a good book? Brian Beasley Gina I think you took Master's question too seriously and missed the word "bigoted" in the question. To Master I take it you are being sarcastic with y …more Gina I think you took Master's question too seriously and missed the word "bigoted" in the question.

To Master I take it you are being sarcastic with your question but I will bite anyways. I don't know why people accuse this book of the things they do actually I do.

Yes, Card is a conservative and he's admittedly a homophobe as well but neither of those things come through in this book.

You have to look pretty hard to find anything "bigoted" in the book and the themes in Ender's Game have nothing to do with any sort of bigot revolution or anything. If anything there is a strong pacifist message that you would think would be the opposite of most conservative's mentalities. This series confuses me Can anyone help me out and clear somethings up? Zchantie I know this is an old question, but I wanted to add to it since I read the books in an order that I regretted.

So you have the first Series: 'The Ender …more I know this is an old question, but I wanted to add to it since I read the books in an order that I regretted. So you have the first Series: 'The Ender Quintet' 1. Ender's Game 2. Speaker for the Dead 3. Xenocide 4. Children of the Mind The parallel series that follows the character Bean who appears in the first Ender's Game book and then gets his own series known as the "Shadow Saga" 1.

Ender's Shadow 2. Shadow of the Hedgemon 3. Shadow Puppets 4. Shadow of the Giant 5. I read this book directly after Ender's Game as suggested and regretted it immensely.

Within this book is also an important part of Bean's story. As then you will know the end fate of all of the characters in Shadow Saga. My recommendation. Read Ender in Exile after you've finished both series if you're interested in knowing what Ender was doing between the end of Game and beginning of Speaker. See all 79 questions about Ender's Game…. Lists with This Book. Community Reviews. Showing Average rating 4. Rating details. More filters. Sort order.

Start your review of Ender's Game Ender's Saga, 1. Shelves: take-yo-sexist-ass-out-of-here , watch-for-flying-tables-everybody , couldn-t-finish , not-worth-the-hype , le-sigh. Sincerely, Women.

Or, if you want, go ahead. If you're going to comment, at least read the whole review and not just a quarter of it. I'm so sick of repeating myself over and over in the comments. Yes, I bash the author first, but I do make my points on why I hated the book itself, and not just because of him. Thank you. Sincerely, Kat. First of all, before I get into the book, I'd like to say that Orson Scott Card is one of the biggest dicks on this Earth. For those of who don't know, he is openly homophobic and a hyprocrite www.

He is a Chauvinist known to believe that women are the weaker sex and were only put on this world to make babies. He is a Mormon that, from what I've heard from people who've read his other books, tries to convert you in his own writing in his novels. Just for this author's personality, this book deserves one star. But now onto the actual book, which deserves one star in itself. It's interesting and keeps your attention.

But immediately, the sexism shows its ugly face; "All the boys are organized into armies. They don't often pass the tests to get in. Too many centuries of evolution are working against them. There are several things wrong with this sentence. In this day and age, thousands of women are in the military and fighting for their country.

They have been for decades now, and longer still. So if this is supposed to be in the future, does Card think that women will give up their ability to fight so easily? Centuries of evolution working against them? On what terms? That we have ovaries?

That we can have babies so are therefore unfit to fight or have the mental capacity to pass the tests boys can easily pass? This is the 21st century, genius. Women work. Women are in the army. Get your head out of your ass and look around, for fuck's sakes.

Characters I feel that Card made all the characters far too young. Ender is six, Valentine is eight, and Peter is ten. Peter has a fetish for torturing squirrels and threatening to kill his siblings. Um, okay? Is there any explanation for this strange behavior? No, because according to this book, all our kids in the future are fully functioning psychopaths. Except the girls, of course. They're too 'mild' for behavior like that. In the future, the army is apparently full of kids barely older than six, up to age twelve.

To be trained for a war that, as far as I could tell from the point I got to, was already won. Writing The writing was atrocious. Card switches from third person perspective to first person constantly.

The first person switches are for the character's 'thoughts', but the words aren't italicized or anything so you can never tell. To me, that's a sign of bad writing. If you can't stick with one kind of perspective, than you should go back to those non-existent creative writing classes.

Plot Towards the middle of the book, the plot started to seriously drag and get outright ridiculous. Valentine and Peter start planning to 'take over the world' by writing fucking debate columns. Not only is the whole 'let's rule the world' concept highly overused, it's poorly planned out.

It's randomly thrown into the story like, "Okay, we need more villains and more things happening, so let's make the ten year old girl and twelve year old murderous boy try to take over the world! Then, switching back to Ender, who is now nine years old and a commander of his own kid army, we have our main character turning into the bullying idiots that bullied him in the beginning of the book. Has he learned nothing? Oh sure, it makes the kids 'better soldiers'.

They're not even seven years old, they are not fucking soldiers. The whole story is a fucked up version of a 'kid military' which is run by controlling adults who don't want the war to end so they can remain in power.

It got so tedious and irritating that I decided to give up on it. I'm not going to waste my time with a book written by a sexist, homophobic, dickwad. I'm not even going to see the movie, which is a real shame because I love Asa Butterfield. View all comments. Nicholas A Rudy Who hurt you? Oct 01, Ruchita rated it did not like it Shelves: fiction , sci-fi , did-not-like. I really did. It's a wonder that even after more than halfway into the book, I still clung on to the foolishly optimistic notion that the book would somehow redeem itself.

That it would end up justifying the tedious, repetitive, drearily dull chapters I trundled through over the course of several days which is unusual, since I'm generally a fast reader.

It pains me to say it, as a hardcore fangirl of science fiction, that one of sci-fi's most beloved and highly regarded novels did not do it for me. Actually, that is understating it. Deep breaths. Let that sink in.

Let the hate flow through you. Good, strike me down I am unarmed. Now let's get to it. Was it because the expectations I had in my mind were unreasonably high and thus were responsible for ruining the book for me?

No way. I make no bones about the fact that Ender's Game, regardless of the respect and popularity it commands in sci-fi circles, is an inherently bad novel.

Why, though, you might ask. Why such vitriol for the book? Here you are, then. Battle games, beating the shit out of kids, battle games, switching back and forth to Armies, battle games. It was so repetitive that I was exhausted at the end of every.

Page after page after page of six year old, seven year old, eight year old Ender and his buddies zooming about in ships trying to freeze one another's socks off. There are no motivations. You never learn anything about the characters except that they are the good guys or the bad guys. Ender is brilliant at everything. Not once. Bernard, Stilson and Co. They're evil baddies cause dey r jealuz of ender's brilliance omg!!!

That's it. No background, no depth, no internal conflicts. No motivation. Words cannot express how two-dimensional and woefully lacking in personality the characters are. What the heck was that all about? I appreciate Card's prescience about the 'Nets' and blogging before it was around, but come on, this is pushing it a bit too far.

How, I beg you, how are we supposed to take the idea that a pair of kids end up taking the world by posting in online forums and blogging?

As if we people of the internet didn't have enough delusions of grandeur already. I'm talking about Mazer's Rackham explaning view spoiler [the buggger's communications system hide spoiler ] to Ender. As for the 'twist ending': I honestly, and I mean, honestly did not find that riveting. It was predictable and, worse, did not justify all that I had to read to make my way to the end.

I say this as a high-school nerd in my own day, as the reviled and hated and made-fun-of socially awkward kid who wanted to be good at whatever they did. But that doesn't make me any more sympathetic to Ender. Honestly, I fail to see what's so great about Ender anyway. I am so infuriated at Card for this. Apart from Ender's claim to intelligence which is never completely explained, by the way there is nothing, NOTHING, that is worth justifying him as the protagonist of one of scifi's supposedly best books ever.

Yes, he loves his sister Valentine. Yes, he doesn't want to hurt people. Yes, he goes ahead and does it anyway. Again and again. Uhm, major wtf there. I had such hopes for this book. Not impossibly high or anything. At the very least, I had expected to like it, you know? I remember, as I worked my way past chapters 4,5,7,10, I expected it to get better.

I expected myself to be mistaken at the initial dissatisfaction, then incredulity, then mild annoyance and then a string of sad sighs and resignation to dislike. Alas, I wasn't mistaken. I felt betrayed. I thought this book was right up there with those 'kindred ones', you know? The sort of books you can come back to again and again. Instead, what I got was a bad plotline, progressively unrealistic plot developments, and a cast of flat, lifeless, unpleasant characters to boot.

Ender's Game, how I wish I had loved you. Why did you forsake me thus. Nov 06, Mark Lawrence rated it it was amazing. I read this story quite a while back with no special expectations.

Like most books I read it just happened to be lying around the house. I read it, was hugely entertained, and went on to read three or four of the sequels. I've heard since all manner of 'stuff' about the author but what's true and what isn't I don't know and I'm not here to critique the man behind the keyboard.

All I can do is report on the contents of the book and those I can thoroughly recommend you check out. The main character, I read this story quite a while back with no special expectations.

The main character, Ender Wiggin, through whose eyes we see the story unfold, is a child genius. Ender's story is told because he is very far from ordinary. OSC employs a bunch of fairly standard story-telling tricks. Our hero is underestimated at every turn, he exceeds expectations, we know he's got it in him and we're frustrated by the stoopid people who just won't see it.

However, OSC manages to bake an irresistable cake using those standard ingredients and once he starts sprinkling on originality as well, you've just got to eat it all. This is sci-fi, not hard sci-fi, not soft sci-fi It has a slightly old school EE Doc Smith feel to it, and you expect someone to pull out a monkey-wrench whenever the computer starts smoking, but none of that worried me.

Given the date it was written there's some quite prescient stuff about the internet here, although shall we say Additionally the inclusion of female and Muslim characters whilst not front and centre was fairly progressive for not ground breaking but certainly ahead of the curve. This is actually a book with good messages for the time about equality, and one which poses interesting philosophical questions about what happens with races with orthogonal thought processes come into contact, and how far one can or should go in such situations.

There definitely is some characterisation going on. We're not talking Asimov's Foundation here where brilliant ideas invite you to forgive cardboard characters. The people here are decently drawn and Ender has his own angst involving genius psychopathic siblings that is quite engaging.

However, it's the stuff that goes on that drives the story. The war games in preparation for battling the aliens, the unfortunately named 'Buggers'. These war games and Ender's brilliance in overcoming increasingly dire odds are a major theme and I loved them.

And then there's the twist. I'll say no more on that except that I was too engaged with the story to see it coming, and when it hit me It doesn't work for everyone but it did for me! The film skips a lot that's important to the book, but I found it entertaining. That's pretty damn cool! Join my 3-emails-a-year newsletter prizes View all 44 comments. Jul 15, Hollie rated it it was amazing Recommends it for: precocious children, smart kids, clever adults.

Shelves: classics , favorites , sci-fi-fantasy. This was the first book I picked up and read all the way through in one sitting. Technically, it's not a difficult read but conceptually it's rich and engaging.

They call us children and they treat us like mice. It's about intelligent children. Not miniature adults- their motivations, understanding, and some-times naivete clearly mark them as children.

But at the same time their intell This was the first book I picked up and read all the way through in one sitting. But at the same time their intelligence and inner strength define them clearly as people. Their personalities are fully developed, even if their bodies are not.

The book is about war. About leadership. And about the qualities that make some one a powerful or admirable individual not always the same thing. In this book children are both kind and cruel to each other as only children know how to be. It is not an easy book for anyone who understands childhood to be a happy time of innocence.

Even still, the characters retain a certain amount of innocence. The questions posed by the war, by the handling of the war, are relevant today, as they were when the book was written, and as they have been since the dawning of the atomic age. Foremost is the question of what makes someone or something a monster.

It is an easy read, but not always a comfortable one. I'd recommend this book for intelligent children. The sort that resent being talked down to and treated like kids.

Here is a book that does not talk down to them, but understands and empathizes with them. Also I recommend it for adults who used to be that kind of child, even if science fiction is not your usual interest. More pure science fiction fans will find it interesting, as will those who enjoy exploring the philosophies of human nature and war. This book sets out to make you think.

View all 45 comments. This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. I checked out Amazon and can surely see why I wanted to give it a shot.

Talk about a cult following of people absolutely smitten with it. I suppose this book could be some kind of manifesto for misfit nerds who waste their life playing video games or a source of legitimacy for motivating tired Marines sick of drilling The book rambles on infinitely about the boy genius Ender and his laser tag in a zero gravity vacuum.

I also suppose we could kid ourselves into thinking the novel brings to light the necessity of Machiavellianism in conflict or maybe we could discuss the pathetic New Age garbage the book ended with as our annoying protagonist spreads some half crocked neo-religion amongst space colonies in which you love the enemy you are forced to annihilate.

Some sort of cryptic Latter Day Saints plug by the Mormon author? First of all, like even the best science fiction, the characters were one dimensional card board cut outs. This starts with the dorky, self absorbed protagonist Ender himself. I can deal with this problem if the plot is cool enough ala Dune. Dune, too, often times dealt with children geniuses, however it was explained and made sense in the story.

We have no idea why Ender and the other children of which Speaking of children, did any of you guys pick up any sort of creepy pedophile vibe in this book? How many times were we told of naked little boys? Why were there references to their tiny patches of pubic hair?

Why did Ender have to have his big fight naked while lathered with soap in the shower? And the corny Ebonics that the children randomly spoke in? The third rate and minuscule insight we were given about the geopolitical conditions on Earth were terribly dated. The Warsaw Pact dominated by Russia? What a cheap rip of Orwell.

Of course, Ender is never beaten at anything he does. I suppose we are to be awed by his victories but, strangely, his greatest triumph was his stoic willingness to use some sort of super weapon to destroy an enemy wholesale via exploding an entire planet.

On the cover of my book, it suggests this book is appropriate for 10 year olds. What could a child get out this book?

May 26, J. Keely rated it liked it Shelves: science-fiction , novel , america , reviewed , space-opera. I was savaged by a miniature poodle the other day--wait--no, someone protested my review of The Giver the other day. If you have any pent-up rage from that college lit teacher who forced you to think about books, be sure to stop by and spew some incoherent vitriol--my reviews are now a socially acceptable site of catharsis for the insecure. In any case, one of them made the argument that children need new versions of great books that are stupider, because children are just stupid versions of norm I was savaged by a miniature poodle the other day--wait--no, someone protested my review of The Giver the other day.

In any case, one of them made the argument that children need new versions of great books that are stupider, because children are just stupid versions of normal people. Coincidentally, in my review of Alice In Wonderland , I happen to put forth my own philosophy regarding children's books. In short: they should present a complex, strange, many-faceted, and never dumbed-down world, because presenting a simple, one-sided, dumbed-down world both insults and stultifies a child's mind.

Luckily for Bean, his incredible mind, creativity and determination bought him to the attention of Sister Carlotta , a nun who was recruiting children to fight a war against the Formics. At the training facility, Battle School, Bean's intelligence became apparent.

Not only was he smarter than average, he was smarter than any other child at Battle School, including Ender Wiggin. Despite Bean's intelligence, Ender was chosen to save humanity from the Formics. Bean began to uncover secrets and truths about the school and struggled to understand what quality Ender had that he did not, until he was assigned to draw up a "hypothetical" roster for a Battle School Army to be commanded by Ender and added himself to the list.

At first, Ender did not appear to recognize Bean's brilliance, but time showed that he was grooming Bean as his tactical support, putting him at the head of an unorthodox platoon challenged to outthink the teachers who designed the game and defeat their attempts to tip the balance of advantages towards Ender's rivals.

He also made friends with an older boy named Nikolai who was drawn to Bean because of their similar looks. It was soon discovered, through Sister Carlotta's research, that the two boys were genetic twins, except for Bean's enhancements. Back in the lab, the scientist Volescu had turned Anton's Key , which meant that Bean's body would never stop growing - including his brain - until a premature death around the age of twenty. Sister Carlotta ensured that Bean would get to live with Nikolai and his parents after the war.

At the end of the story, after they defeated the Formics, Bean was united with his real parents and Nikolai. Ender's Game Wiki Explore. Ender's Game Film. Bean is able to out-think everyone at flight school from the kid commanders to the teachers and officers. He knows what will get him in trouble whether it's bullies or teachers, but he also knows most everything else that is going on in Battle School even those things the teachers don't want him to know.

Those things that make him a risk and have the teachers wondering whether he belongs. Audio Commentary There is a full cast for this one and Scott Brick, playing Bean, does an amazing job. In fact there's not one bad performance and even the great Stefan Rudnicki plays a minor role Worth it just to listen to him.

At the end of the book, Card gives an afterword that mainly discusses the movie Ender's Game that he says will be a combination of Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow. This wasn't the original decision, but actually helped to cut down the script being able to play from both point of views.

Card also mentions that once someone writes a book everyone starts asking when it's going to be made into a movie, to which he replies, it's already in it's perfect form, it's a book. Too true! Sadly, this movie will probably never come to pass - I don't know how long these talks have been going on, but it's been a while.

This is a great follow up or beginning to the classic, Ender's Game. It puts you right into the setting and mind of the main character and everything becomes real.

Coupled with Card's writing, you can't go wrong - this is a great book. Highly Recommended. View all 11 comments. When I read a description of a book summing it up as a retelling of a story from a different perspective, I groan internally and my interest wanes slightly.

Ender's Shadow follows those exact lines. We switch from Ender's perspective to Bean's, the brilliant dwarf child who serves under his command. What shocked me the most was how much more I preferred Bean's perspective. Ender grew up with a loving family and had a generally conventional outlook for a genius. Bean functions as a direct contradic When I read a description of a book summing it up as a retelling of a story from a different perspective, I groan internally and my interest wanes slightly.

Bean functions as a direct contradiction, having grown up in squalor with no family, a tiny body, and a brain capable of cutting through almost anything. Bean spends most of the novel slicing through the world of the Battle school at angles that give him vastly more information and awareness of the world than Ender possessed, and his angry, calculating view gives the story a much richer perspective.

The only issues arise from the few points where it directly intersects Ender's Game. Bean wasn't written with a great deal of depth in the original story, he qualified as a background character, and anytime his conversations with Ender come up, the interactions feel weirdly unnatural.

It's almost as if this larger, more multi-faceted Bean doesn't fit back in his original container. Despite what Card states in the introduction, you should not read this book first. Many bits of necessary exposition from Ender's Game are not reiterated here, and part of the fun derives from getting Bean's bird's-eye view of what Ender's witnessed from within the trenches. The score I gave this book should almost be the score awarded to the two books collectively, as I read them consecutively.

There's a reason Card wanted to movie adaptation to essentially be a combination of Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow. The two complement each other amazingly well. Feb 14, Kat Kennedy rated it it was amazing Shelves: sci-fi-alicious , kat-s-book-reviews. Perhaps because I found Bean, as a character, more relatable in how he analyzes and views people and the world in general.

He also felt more real as a character in that he is awkward and clueless and greatly flawed. The pacing for this book is a little less smooth in comparison to Ender's Game.

The plot, on the other hand, is a little better as you have a greater insight into the background workings of Ender's success. Graff and other characters come to life in a greater degree and have more personality and "air time".

So too does Petra. Over all, I enjoyed this book. View all 7 comments. Oct 19, R. Gold rated it it was amazing. While Ender's Game taught me that reading is fun, Ender's shadow is my favorite book and series in the Ender Universe.

Ender may be the hero the universe needed but Bean is the most powerful weapon the universe had. The down and dirty story of an orphan child who had to learn to survive on his own at the age of four and looked on the world in contempt is just the hero I needed to re-introduce myself to Card's work.

I read this book back when I worked at Barnes and Noble and would sneak reads be While Ender's Game taught me that reading is fun, Ender's shadow is my favorite book and series in the Ender Universe. I didn't particularly feel guilty either because most of the time I was never relieved for my breaks anyway. Bean decisiveness, cold-hearted calculating nature, and minuscule stature really created the perfect contrast for a world in danger and a military in dire need of a savior.

He is easily one of my favorite fictional characters of all time, and writing this review now makes me feel the urge to re-read the book. View all 3 comments. Mar 27, Chris rated it it was amazing Shelves: military , science-fiction , war , top-shelf. Not because it was necessarily a better book — though it is longer — but because the two books offer different views of the same events from two distinctly different perspectives.

Ender Wiggin is brilliant and empathetic, a boy torn apart by his own doubts and fears and driven to greatness by a government that sees him simply as a means to an end. It is only his ability to understand and come to love those around him that gets him through his trials, endure his isolation, and which ultimately allows him to put together the team that defeats the Buggers. Ender seems to be more human than human, and not in that ironic Blade Runner sort of way, but in a way which makes us want to see him succeed and do well.

When we meet Bean, Ender is using the same techniques of isolation and constructive abuse that were used on him, making us wonder if Ender will turn out to be just a copy of the adults who were tormenting him. We learn that Bean, like Ender, is brilliant, but he is also strong-willed and ambitious and takes well to the atmosphere of Battle School. He has to give up some of his essential humanity in order to save the world.

More brilliant than Ender, Bean learns to find his humanity. He has to learn to see people as people, rather than a means to an end or a puzzle to solve. We start out in Rotterdam, which has become a center of poverty and violence among rival gangs of street children. Bean, tiny and starving, manages to prove his worth to one of these gangs by suggesting strategies by which they can get more food and more respect. He gains the attention of Sister Carlotta, a nun who is working for both God and the International Fleet, and she is the first to see his full potential as a student in Battle School.

But in the course of trying to understand Bean, she learns that his origin is one of horror, and that his future is even worse. As a character, I liked Bean more than I liked Ender, possibly because on a scale of Complete Misanthrope to Bodhisattva, Bean and I are pretty close to the complete misanthrope end of the spectrum. As we meet him, Bean views people as means to an end or as problems to be solved. That hyper-analytical way of looking at the world makes Bean a much more aware character than Ender as well.

So while Ender was exploring the computer fantasy game, Bean was crawling through air ducts in the Battle School. While Ender was researching the battles of the past, Bean was learning how to spy on his teachers. In the end, just as Ender is learning to put aside his humanity for the common good, Bean discovers a deep well of compassion that he never knew he had.

Ender becomes more isolated, and Bean becomes more connected to others. Most interestingly, many of the revelations that were revealed to Ender in his book were discovered by Bean in this one, which creates a whole different reading experience.

As he noted in his forward, a dozen years passed between the first book and this one, and a person changes in that much time. He learned new things and gained new perspectives, and that naturally had a great influence on how he chose to write this story. Writers will always say that they write for the story, not for the fans, but every writer wants in their heart of hearts to have people love what they write. Revisiting your most famous work and exploring a popular character brings great risks with it.

Fortunately, I think Card succeeded with this book. And if you start with this one, let me know how it goes. I want to be the kind of boy you are, thought Bean. View 1 comment. Aug 30, Seth rated it did not like it Shelves: crap , young-adult , science-fiction , sf-f-h. This is the simplified version of Ender's Game for the kiddie set that can't handle rich characters with moral ambiguity, moral introspection, and character growth.

Card does great work teaching people how to re-imagine stories from different viewpoints and with different motivations in his workshops. It's a shame that he didn't demonstrate it here. Instead, we get Bean a great character in the original story as a classic Mary Sue , a wish-fulfillment character with all of Ender's skill but none This is the simplified version of Ender's Game for the kiddie set that can't handle rich characters with moral ambiguity, moral introspection, and character growth.

Instead, we get Bean a great character in the original story as a classic Mary Sue , a wish-fulfillment character with all of Ender's skill but none of his angst or growth around it.

Even the adults who spend the first book walking a delicate line trying to save Ender from their own work fall down at Bean's feet and beg him to save them from their own inadequacies.

The one limitation he has, and I'm not kidding, from his genetically engineered childhood where he was found in a toilet tank, is that he is so smart, so physically developed, and so gosh-darn what the 6 year old reader wants to grow up to be that he's going to die young. Except, of course, you know he's not. Because Mary Sues do die young, but he obviously won't.

We have more sequels to milk, after all, and not enough uberkinder to go around. Skip this. Do your local child a favor and don't let them read it. If they want to read pablum, let them read fun pablum, at least.

This book should come with insulin. View all 18 comments. Oct 19, Jared rated it it was ok Shelves: science-fiction. This book tried really hard to ruin Ender's Game for me.

The premise of the book is that Ender wasn't really the hero of his own book, but that his course was manipulated and prodded onward by an even greater genius, in the form of Bean, a member of Ender's army. Bean had a brutal upbringing on the streets, and somehow ended up in Battle School, where he takes over the computer system and runs everything by the time he's six.

He ensures that Ender ends up saving the world -- without his help, En This book tried really hard to ruin Ender's Game for me. He ensures that Ender ends up saving the world -- without his help, Ender would have failed. It was interesting to see the events of Ender's Game from a different perspective, but that's about the only positive thing I have to say about this book.

Possibly the deepest theme element in the book is how Bean's interactions with Ender forced him to care about someone other than himself. End of Bean's worries that he might not be human. It seems like Orson Scott Card also tried to pull in some elements of Alan Dean Foster's "Flinx" series, with the whole "genetically manipulated super-human with emotional insecurity" thing. Jan 28, Michael rated it did not like it Shelves: fiction. Ender's Game: There's this really, really smart kid, see, and he's lonely, and he has to do really hard stuff, and adults are mean.

I can get with that. Give me a break. I think Card is great but this is just ridiculous. I read Shadow of the Hegemon but quit after that. View 2 comments. Not one to miss a commercial opportunity, Card has returned the favor, producing a whopping 15 Ender-related books with more in the works apparently.

Maybe my reaction is more about how I have changed since my innocent days of youth. At the opening, Bean is supposedly just 4 years old and starving to death. Despite being almost too weak to put food to mouth, he manages to convince a small street gang led by female boss Poke to keep him alive by giving them critical survival tips to gain entry to food kitchens and stave off older bullies.

Against all odds, tiny Bean excels enough to get picked for Battle School, where he intersects with the famous storyline of Ender Wiggins.

Bean is a very different character from Ender. He is a child-genius that has grown up on the streets with only one goal — to survive at all costs by using his wits and tactical skills to manipulate stronger people around him, both children and adults, but remaining behind the scenes and avoiding the notice of powerful enemies. So while Ender is constantly under the spotlight and is forced to prove his leadership again and again, Bean stays in the shadows, carefully gathering data on the other commanders in battle school, the trainers, and the generals who think they are controlling events.

He surreptitiously helps Ender when he can, but sometimes makes crucial mistakes that actual expose Ender to potentially fatal danger. As the games get more relentless as the generals accelerate the pace, knowing that the real battle with the Buggers at their home world is rapidly approaching, it is Bean who seems most aware of the real situation, and Ender who is withering under the pressure.

I was impressed with how exciting the story remained even when I knew in detail what was going to happen. Card managed to give the reader new angles that make us reexamine the same events with greater emotional depth and understanding of the greater context of the story. I think after having written so many books about Ender over the years, Card has a deep knowledge of the characters, storyline, and universe, and also what appeals to fans. They provide a level of dramatic range to the characters that really enhances an already-compelling story.

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. This is a hard book for me to review without getting angry, so bear with me.

Its one of those books almost everyone has read. Its translated in hundreds of languages. Its won many, many awards, and has won Orson S This is a hard book for me to review without getting angry, so bear with me. Its won many, many awards, and has won Orson Scott Card many awards as well.

Whole sections of the book are already written, as Bean and Ender experience the same situations together. All Card needed to do was fill in the blanks, toss in a bit of behind-the-scenes information on Ender through the eyes of a team member, and voila!

Instant hit, especially with fan boys like me. Unfortunately, thats not what happened. He forgot what it meant to write a story based on a childhood dream during the time of Nixon, Carter, and Regan. Instead, he wrote as an upstanding citizen and devoted Latter Day Saint. Don't get me wrong, neither of these attributes are bad!

Along the way, Ender knows he's being manipulated, and believes he understands the implications found within such manipulations.

And even in the face of severe adversity, chooses to keep going because he knows its the right thing to do. He sees their deception and continues on, because even if the deception itself is wrong, their goal is just. And it coincides with his own reason for continuing on; to save his sister Valentine.

Throughout the book, we also are given the perspectives of Generals Graff and Anderson, who speak constantly of the affects their manipulations are having on Ender, and the justifying reasons for their deception of someone so young. Graff is even put on trial at the end of the book for his involvement, and is deemed not guilty, in no small an example of the ends justifying the means.

Instead of sticking with the idea of a government uncaringly using a very small segment of the population for the protection of the species as a whole, instead the government is painted as almost completely lost in how to proceed.

Only the arrival of hyper-intelligent Bean saves the day. The government wasn't smart enough to plan anything in advance, but Bean is! Not only that, but he continues to get smarter and smarter. By the end of the Bean series " Shadow of the Giant " , he has long since past the point of believability. Nearly every problem Bean faces, he is able to solve with his unbelievably powerful brain without any outside help. A recently-announced prequel to "Speaker for the Dead" makes me fear Card will start rewriting the rest of the series as well.

And that makes me quite sad, because it will mean the scuttling of one of the greatest science fiction series around. Sep 18, Marie Lu rated it it was amazing Shelves: all-time-favorites. I consider the two as one book. Oct 17, Chi rated it it was amazing. Nov 18, Davyne DeSye rated it it was amazing. Absolutely fantastic! For this reason, humans have — for decades — being combing Earth for the best and the brightest children, hoping to train starting at a very young age those children to be the brilliant military commanders that will be necessary to defend Earth from the coming attack.

Bean is a street urchin, small, malnourished and hanging on to life by focusing his extreme intellect on survival. Bean agrees to go to Battle School — not because he has to, but because it is a matter of survival. On Earth, he has incurred the murderous wrath of larger, older street urchin.

The character of Bean is brilliantly developed and explored.