Ender's Game by Orson Scott CardMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Fascinating book. I was going to give it four stars during the middle part of the book then it pulled itself back into five-star territory with a wonderful ending. This is one of those books that gets stronger in the last quarter which can be so important. I was able to overlook some of my gripes with it when it gave me a surprising twist and then a thought-provoking ending. This book is a little preachy, pretty political, and definitely a morality play. There are times when you want the scenery to change or the characters to do something unexpected. The biggest headscratcher for me is the author’s complete disregard for age appropriate voice. It’s like he said, I want the characters in this to be kids, but I want to be able to tell this story through the eyes and voice of adults. How can I do both? Oh, I know, I just will. In my mind, the protagonist could have started out his training at about age eleven and the climax could have come with him at age seventeen or eighteen and the voice could have been more believable. So basically, that’s just how I imagined the characters as I was reading. But it was always clear that there was a point and a purpose to the use of voice, and, as I said, a meaningful ending allows me to forgive some of the heavy-handedness of the way the story was presented. I understand why this is a classic. I was left thinking about the story after it was over, and that’s kind of the whole point.
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Thanks for the review! I hear they're making a movie out of this one. I gotta read it before that comes out! :D
ReplyDeleteYay, I'm so glad you ended up enjoying it! Now you need to see the parallel story of Bean (huge risk here since it takes place during Ender's game, but it's a completely different story). Read Ender's Shadow. I was really impressed. :-)
ReplyDeleteInteresting -- I first read it when I was twelve and I didn't have any problems with the voice at all. The kids are supposed to be geniuses, and in my experience really geeky kids tend to talk on at least a slightly more adult level than ordinary teenagers, but -- On the other hand, I do know that the older Card gets, the more annoyingly similar the voice becomes (and no matter who is speaking, too -- his latest couple of books, for example, are all but unreadable partially because every single character sounds like an old white guy, including the young Greek-Ukranian girl) -- I don't remember whether this was one of those books. (Some of his early stuff, like Hart's Hope and The Folk of the Fringe, has fantastic and varied voice).
ReplyDeleteThis sounds good. glad you enjoyed it. Great review.
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