Ender's World

I hadn't quite planned to read Ender's Game - at least, not so soon. I had planned to do so after going through Alastair Reynolds' Revelation Space (I have a bit of a bias towards British sci-fi, ever since I read Paul J. McAuley's Fairyland), but a good friend of mine urged me to put off my plans for the meantime, and start on Orson Scott Card's masterpiece.

I was not disappointed in the least. There is a reason Card made his name on this short-story-expanded-to-novel. The concept is one reason: the idea for the “battle room” in zero-g is not only incredible, but also depicts in a believable manner how fighting in zero-g might go, and how training for it might go, as well. There is also the world-building: readers who aren't familiar with the Cold War might be puzzled by quite a few things, but even a quick-and-dirty working knowledge of that period in history is enough for them to recognize its influence on the novel, and the future it presents. In this aspect the novel might be somewhat dated, but there are more than a few things about it that are most assuredly not dated. The concept of the “nets,” for instance, is something that will strike any Internet user as incredibly familiar.

The characters are also quite fascinating, especially since it can be hard to remember that the most important characters are all actually pre-adolescents to adolescents, because they don't think or even talk like “normal” children - then again, these are hardly normal children anyway. Readers who have ever felt isolated for having gifts at an early age, or who have been forced to make difficult decisions at a very young age, will find themselves relating quite quickly to Ender and his fellows at the Battle School. Some readers, though, might not quite like Ender himself - not least because everything seems to always go his way without him really having to try so hard (sentiments shared by other characters in the novel itself). Nevertheless, his conflicts regarding his place in the world and his relationships to the people around him make him an interesting and sympathetic character.

There are also other characters who are just as interesting, primarily Ender's siblings Peter and Valentine. People familiar with crime procedurals like Criminal Minds will recognize just what kind of person Peter is, and will likely feel a shudder of fear when they read about what happens to him at the end of the novel. Valentine is interesting on her own, having a mind and understanding of the world as powerful as that of her brothers', but it is for her role as Ender's rock and anchor that readers will, in all likelihood, love her. She's not soft, to be sure (sharing genes and a household with Peter and Ender ensures that she is hardly that), but she is the perfect middle ground between the two extremes embodied by her brothers.

The novel moves along at a fairly fast clip, thanks in very large part to Card's language, but the ideas contained within it are not exactly small and easy to dismiss. The Cold War might be over, but there is still a lot here that will strike readers as familiar, especially in relation to the idea of power. Like Ender himself, this story should not be underestimated.