El joc de l'Ender (1977)

Good book .. But I still don't get why people keep saying it's one of the best Sci-Fi novels ..

Was slightly underwhelming ..

3.5/5 stars ( )

I read this and loved it and THEN found out the author is vocal about his stance against LGBTQ rights and I'm mad at myself for loving his book so much :( ( )

Series Info/Source: This is the first book in the Ender Quintet. I got this on audiobook through Audible.

Audiobook Quality (4/5): The audiobook is well done and easy to listen to. I wasn’t a huge fan of the main narrator, he felt a bit stiff to me, but it was well enough done. I liked the narrator that did Valentine’s parts better.

Thoughts: I have always wanted to read this book and when my son got assigned to read it for English class we decided to read it at the same time. My son (who is almost 15 years old) loved it and thought it was amazing. He immediately wanted to start on the rest of the books in the series. I think if I had read it at his age I may have felt the same way, although the main female characters don’t get a great role in this novel (which was true of soooo many books written in the 80’s).

I did like the book, it is a good story that touches on a lot of important issues. I thought the twists at the end were well done and entertaining. Unfortunately, having my first read of this happen as an adult parent there was a lot I didn’t like about the story. I couldn’t help but continually wince at how disconnected the parents were from their children. I also thought the treatment of the kids was just awful throughout the book and kept thinking about how I would feel if my kids were going through all of this.

I also couldn’t help but consider the role of the female characters in the story. Valentine (the only main female character) is dubbed too passive to be of any use to anyone and she supports this view by following Peter’s lead for a good portion of the book. The only other female character of any note is Petra, who is a leader in battle school and the only other female trainee you run across…of course she is harshly singled out for her sex. I feel like this really dates the book quite a bit but it also makes for an interesting discussion of how things have changed in our society since this book was written.

Aside from the above thoughts, this is a fast-paced read with a lot of points of discussion. There are a lot of deep topics here around family, society, etc, etc. I did think the “twist” was very predictable however, I am a lot older than my son and have read many more sci-fi books and run across a few with a similar twist to them. Ender’s Game may have been the first to put forth this kind of idea but I am not sure.

My Summary (4/5): Overall I enjoyed this but not enough to continue with this series. I found the idea of parents being so disjointed from their kids unrealistic and also found the twists here predictable. I missed the inclusion of any strong female characters but do understand it represents the time the book was written in. I do think this was an interesting choice for my son’s teacher to have them read. There are a ton of interesting things for discussion here; from the society Ender lives in and the idea of alien life, to our society in the 80’s and how that influenced the story. ( )

Well that was really quite good and i'm also very happy that i'm not entirely depressed :lol. Or to put it another way this could have ended a lot darker i was absolutely convinced Peter was going to murder Valentine at some point. Of course your happiness may vary ;) .

I saw the film before this and i can see why they made the changes they did however the film is a decent-enough YA coming of age drama... the book really isn't.

When adapting they could have focused on the child soldier, sociapath or political angles all of which would have made more sense now than when the book was written. Or the problem of understanding or the good and evil aspects inherent in sentient life.. and most of these are in the film a bit but still the main thing is just a YA drama.

The writing isn't high-brow literature but the many themes give you a lot to think about. And the long denouement worked far better than i expected.

Also i understand there are a number of sequels but don't worry about that this book has a very complete story.. can't imagine where the sequels could go from here.

Recommended even if you've seen the film, its remarkably close to the film in plot and yet so far from it in depth. ( )

Aw, I was all happy and then I got back on GoodReads and saw--OF COURSE it's a quintet! I mean, there were a few pages where I thought there was no way it didn't have a sequel, but then it wound down so nicely.

Anyway, much as I enjoyed this book, I think I'll let the story end there.

And I did really like this book. It's one of those ones where, even though I saw most of the main twists coming, I was still enjoying myself, enjoying the journey there. Big difference from the book that shall not be named that I read a couple weeks ago! The writing was straightforward, I got very caught up in Ender and Valentine's stories, and I liked the framing device of Graff's discussions about Ender's progress.

I think I'm going to compare this book to the movie Looper. Don't want to pick at it too much or the whole thing will unravel, but it's still a fun read. If you're reading this you probably know I've been on an extended Star Trek kick, and I really felt like this was a good balance of that. There are similar ideas--the futuristic things that did, actually, come to be (communicators/flip phones and tables/tablets), the attempts to unify the world into a cooperative whole--and it was a good mental exercise to see how they diverged. I like this kind of book because it's only subtly dystopian: so much of the background politics you could actually imagine taking place.

Ender's psychology was really well developed, too, I felt. The subtle ways that Ender's teachers separated him from the group rang very true. They're the kind of things that people might do well-meaningly, without realizing that they're setting someone apart. It was a little hard to imagine a six year old as a tactical genius, but then, he was a genius--that was kind of the point. I feel like the Hunger Games owes a lot to this book for bringing up the idea that children can react to very dark situations. Obviously I don't know if there were others that came first or after, but you get the point.

I have a few obvious complaints that probably come from the fact that...okay, Audrey is licking my fingers while I'm typing...sorry about that...from the fact that the book was written in the 70s. I was glad to see a little diversity, but it felt very token-ish. The only time it felt like the diversity might really mean something to the book was when religion was involved, when it was expressed despite the fact that it was suppressed--so Alai, in particular, felt very meaningful until he was just shuffled into the background as another face in the crowd. Oh, and let's not forget the fact that there are a grand total of two women in this book and they are the only ones whose emotions are viewed as a weakness rather than, as in Ender's case, an asset. Double standards, much? The fact that empathy is so valuable to Ender just makes the gender inequality especially frustrating: by Card's own rules, girls should have more of a presence than they do.

Overall, though, I enjoyed this book. I loved the idea behind the aliens--it's not a concept I've ever heard of before, which is kind of mind blowing these days. I found the plot's main twist intriguing, even if I had a good idea of what it would be by about forty pages in, and that, as I mentioned above, is really something. A good story can pull you in even if it's not entirely unexpected, and that's what this book did. Would definitely recommend to people interested in lighter sci-fi.

Quote Roundup

35) "It isn't the world at stake, Ender. Just us. Just humankind. As far as the rest of the biosphere is concerned, we could be wiped out and it would adjust, it would get on with the next step in evolution. But humanity doesn't want to die. As a species, we have evolved to survive."

I'd actually been thinking about this a bit, since I recently finally watched Intersteller. Gol dangit, Audrey's licking my fingers again. I had salsa in my dinner--how isn't she burning her little tongue? Anyway, I've been thinking about the fact that humans can adapt quickly rather than having to wait around for evolution to kick in. Every species evolves to survive, that's essentially the definition of evolution. But we've evolved to adapt ourselves and our environment to almost anything. It's kind of mind boggling how it worked out, that we could evolve to the point where we can think of ourselves, think of concepts like the fact that the ability to think about ourselves is so unique as far as we know (but how could it possibly be in the whole vastness of space?), while creating writing that doesn't physically exist to convey words, which don't mean anything on their own unless people agree on them, to share weird ideas on a machine that would absolutely stump most people even twenty years ago. ...

Okay, so there's this Bloom County comic strip I think of surprisingly often, though I can't find it for the life of me. Oliver, the genius, is up on the roof stargazing, contemplating the sheer size of the universe, working himself up as he feels smaller and smaller while also feeling bigger and bigger. The last panel shows him seated in the well-lighted room, glass of milk in front of him and a cookie stuffed in his mouth as he explains to the readers that the infinite is best contemplated in a kitchen with a cookie. Sometimes you just gotta stop yourself. So yeah, that's me stopping myself before I dizzy myself too much with existential wallowing. Because you can totally wallow in dizzying existentialism.

132) She had never seen him show such weakness. You're so clever, Peter. You saved your weakness so you could use it to move me now. And yet it did move her. Because if it were true, even partly true, then Peter was not a monster, and so she could satisfy her Peter-like love of power without fear of becoming monstrous herself. She knew that Peter was calculating even now, but she believed that under the calculations he was telling the truth. It had been hidden layers deep, but he had probed her until he found her trust.

Wow. There's so much going on here, and it really impresses me that Card can capture all of that conflicting feeling in one person: wanting to be believe but not wanting to be tricked; wanting to be like someone you hate, but not wanting to be them; being cynical while being relieved; being manipulated but actually wanting it for the excuse it provides. Peter is terrifying...but so, in these moments, is Valentine.

284) The only girl in Ender's program becomes the only person to suffer an emotional breakdown. Ugh. It would have made just as much sense if it was Dink. ( )