Nor an Ender Be
By Margaret Hicks in Arts & Entertainment on Feb 28, 2007 3:00PM
For this month’s Convince Us we asked you to recommend a sci-fi book. We got a lot of great suggestions, and the book we ended picking was Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card.
And we’re really sorry we did, what a load.
NO NO, just kidding. Seriously. We loved Ender’s Game. We loved Ender’s Game so much that we finished it in a day. We read it every second we had the chance, on the train, at lunch, on the couch, right before bed, the two seconds we had to stand in line to get our chicken gyros. We pretty much ate Ender’s Game.
Why did we love this book so much? First, we think the book is extremely uncomplicated. It’s easy on the eyes, easy on the mind. Card said himself in the forward of our copy “I designed Ender’s Game to be as clear and accessible as any story of mine could possibly be.” The ease with which we glided through this novel was a relief. One of our favorite lines comes early in the book, setting up this sci-fi world we’re entering:
The table beeped. Someone was at the door.
The two sentences together are so illogical it made us laugh out loud with glee. We continued to highlight religiously, underlining passages we thought were meaningful, like this one about power:
the power to cause pain is the only power that matters, the power to kill and destroy, because if you can’t kill then you are always subject to those who can, and nothing and no one will ever save you
Or this one about adults:
... but the most important message was this: the adults are the enemy, not the other armies. They do not tell us the truth.
Or this:
There’s only one thing that will make them stop hating you. And that’s being so good at what you do that they can’t ignore you.
All of these themes ebb and flow in the book, yet there are a million more quotes we could have used. Orson Scott Card played with so many different issues but we never felt overwhelmed, confused, or preached to.
We often forgot that Ender was only six, or nine, or twelve. At moments we wanted to grab him and hold him in our arms, and other times we were overpowered by his strength, his smarts, and his confidence. As Ender grows more weary, more alone, sicker, but stronger and less afraid; we wept for the little boy when his friends come to help him fight his last battle:
Ender put on the headset
“Salaam,” said a whisper in his ears.
“Alai,” said Ender.
“And me, the dwarf.”
“Bean."
Even writing that now brought a quick tear to our eye.
We haven’t even begun on Ender’s final battle, his brother and sister, the End of the World Game, or the Speaker for the Dead. Even in its simplicity and minimalism, Ender’s Game is way more book than most. To touch on all its themes — or even half of them — would lead us to a review at least as long as the book itself.
So, we’ve heard the other Ender books are almost as good, should we read them? Or stop now before we tarnish any memory of Ender Wiggin?