Ender's Game -- Orson Scott Card

Now, I love books. All books: trashy, biographical, scientific, fantasy, deeply intellectual, I really just love them. It runs in the family too. My father just got the flu, and complained that "you know it's bad when I don't even want a book." However, even I admit that not all books are equally wonderful, equally moving, or equally important. Some are only good, some are amazing, and others are so powerful they ought to be required reading for humans. Ender's Game belongs to the last category.

Firstly, I should admit that I'm a sucker for school novels. Especially boarding schools. When I was little, I couldn't decide if I wanted to live in Jo's boarding school in Little Men, or would prefer to be in an orphanage (think Annie, the musical). Regardless, there is a certain literary power in gathering a large number of children together and allowing them to outnumber adult supervision. Ender's Game, besides offering a compelling presentation of childhood, satisfies all cravings for the boarding school mentality of adult versus child. Besides the ever present threat of the Buggers, adults are a clearly menacing presence throughout the book. This is not a new theme, however, Card refreshes the idea by making the adults scary in their small-mindedness, cruelty, and ignorance. These are not impotent or bumbling authority figures, but deliberate and incompetent men. There are only three women in the book that I recall, Ender's mother, his sister Valentine, and his peer (as far as any could be considered in Ender's league) Petra.

Card's most impressive skill lies in his ability to place information. When I read the book for the first time, I gasped out loud at least three times, none of which I will tell you about because I despise spoilers more than almost anything. Once, my senior year of High School, an English professor revealed the end of Hamlet when we were one act into the play. I am still scarred to this day. He claimed that novelty was not the main draw of any Shakespeare work. Whatever. While Card's shocking reveals are a draw for readers, they are not the component of the book which makes it so important.

I don't truly like to moralize. Nor do I like authors who do, at least in an obvious way, especially for adult audiences (the exception to this rule is Louisa May Alcott, who could preach at me all she liked and I would continue to adore her stories). Card takes a magnificent fascinating work of science fiction, and bumps it up to imperative reading by adding a beautiful moral message. Again if I said any more I'd be giving it away, but after reading Ender's Game I felt like I had a different outlook on life, and needed to reevaluate how I looked at the world. Any work that draws a reader in like that, and spits them out taking a good hard look at themselves has achieved a major literary goal. Card communicates with his reader on a level that very few authors achieve.

I have to tell you, besides gasping at several parts of the book, I may also have cried. Full disclosure. Not stupid crying that, like in The Education of Little Tree. No catharsis in those tears, and I didn't feel like the book really deserved them. Ender's Game was well worth the cry.