A review by killa_bunnies
Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

adventurous dark sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

I guess I would have just ignored this book since I already knew the whole premise and thought there wasn’t much else to it. What a fool I was! Luckily, my friend convinced me to give it a try, and I’m happy I did.

In general, this is a book about a secret army program training kids to become new super-soldier leaders, as mankind is under attack by "buggers" from space. As such, it needs commanders to lead the strike force that will save the entire Earth. This is where we meet Ender Wiggin, a six-year-old boy who has just been selected to begin his training in the hopes that he will one day become the new commander.

However, there are so many layers that make this book a truly visionary tale. Written in 1985, I was surprised by how contemporary it feels: propaganda, fake news, opinion manipulation, populism, and even internet trolls—it’s all here. The book even describes the mechanisms of social network communication more than 20 years before they were created. Scott Card proved to be a visionary in the way he depicted various approaches to information sharing and propaganda.

The whole book could be read as a study in manipulation—both on a personal level and on a larger scale, influencing entire nations. Between the lines, you can sense the Cold War undertones, with Russia portrayed as the aggressive country posing as a necessary ally, waiting for the right moment to strike. Does that ring a bell?

So all in all, I was happy I did not let the prejudice win and read the book. There is much more to the main twist of the book, which, I guess, is by now very well known.