Reaction to Enders Game

[ahoxx065]

Don't get me wrong Enders Game is a good book. However, I feel it is very overrated. It was incredibly predictable and repetitive. I do think it would be a good book to have middle schoolers read, I know I would have appreciated it more at that age.

[Gravity Defier]

Jesus, people. There are already threads about reactions to EG. How about you all put them into one instead of making a new thread each time?

[neo-dragon]

...And welcome to PWeb

[Gravity Defier]

Wait a minute...that's not standard protocol for welcoming someone?! Whoever is in charge of this place needs to train us better.


aho, what did you find to be repetitive? I get the predictable bit.

[ahoxx065]

Ender doesn't get along with adults or other children at home. He beats a bigger kid up and sends him to the hospital. Then again on his launch, and again at battle school. It seems like all Ender does is butt heads with adults and send bigger kids to the hospital (or morgue). It seems like the books other parts are just filling to get us to these points. My opinion.

[neo-dragon]

I think that you're really selling the story short to say that the bits between those confrontations are filler. Not to mention that each of those fights develops Ender's character, serves a greater purpose in the adult's plans for him, and foreshadows his ultimate annihilation of the Buggers, and subsequent guilt and quest for redemption.

The sequel "Speaker for the Dead" might be more your cup of tea though. It's less action-adventure and more philosophical. Many readers prefer it to the original for that reason. There's also the more direct sequel, "Ender in Exile" which comes out in November. Obviously I can't comment on the style of that one though.

[Peterlover14]

Just because it was kinda predictable it does not make it a bad book

[Tamara08]

I really enjoyed this book; I had a tough time remebering how old Ender was but I feel that was kind of the point. I don't think that it was that predictible at all; sure there were some re-accuring themes but I feel that those were ment for the reader to understand Ender's chracter and to condition Ender for what was to come.

[Peterlover14]

Yeah age got me too when I read it.

Welcome to Pweb! I've seen your name as last registered for a while and I was waiting for you to post something:)

[Jeesh_girl15]

Two days is not a while... Just cause you post like every single day doesn't mean we all do Just kidding... Welcome... Hope you stick around.

[Peterlover14]

Haha yes it was a long time for me. sitting at the computer waiting for responses is tedious. Just another reason why you people should believe me when I say I'm sticking around.

If your lost Tamara08, here's what going on:

I'm actually new too and I'm already a soldier, but half the people here think I'm just gonna post a lot and then stop all together. I'm trying to explain to then that it's not gonna happen...

[perspicacious.emperor]

I'm actually new too and I'm already a soldier

ahemPOSTINGSPREEahem

I don't think it can be called repetitive, to rebut the first post. I think it's a literary device in that it is a reflection of something that happened previous. Plus, it was meant to happen, so it wasn't as if the author sat down and wrote a story and just by accident a plot point was repeated. That's just lack of intent. Authors use this kind of thing all the time, on purpose. Something in the beginning reflects the end, etc.

Also, please don't say it's supposed to be for middle schoolers. That hurts my feelings lol. The advantage over reading it at an older age is you soak up the meanings behind the stories more. At twelve, thirteen, you read stories for what happens. When you are older, you think about the author's intent over what the characters did. When you understand what lies beneath, you like it more. I hope that doesn't just apply to me.[/quote]

[Peterlover14]

Well not everybody goes crazy like I do. I was looking at the member list(it's HUGE) but like half the people who registered haven't posted once. So in that case, yeah I've done a lot for someone who started...what, last week? I can't even remember.

[Glass]

Don't get me wrong Enders Game is a good book. However, I feel it is very overrated. It was incredibly predictable and repetitive. I do think it would be a good book to have middle schoolers read, I know I would have appreciated it more at that age.

read SPEAKER FOR THE DEAD and then tell me afterwords that you like it..cause i know you will.

[Crazy Tom: C Toon]

read SPEAKER FOR THE DEAD and then tell me afterwords that you like it..cause i know you will.[/quote]

I agree. SftD was incredibly unpredictable with the Piggies and their strange customs. Jane was great, and definitely NOT something somebody could tell was coming. Just read the Entire Speaker series, then try to tell me that it's overrrated and predictable.

Incedentally... if you think it's overrated and predictable, why did you go through all the trouble of getting on PWeb, creating an account, then posting a response all so you could dis the series?

[duer0043]

I absolutley loved Enders game!! Everything about it: the characters, the plot, the writing, and especially the ending! I am not a huge sci-fi guru, so I am wondering if anybody can offer me some advice, since I typically don't read this genre, if the proceeding books in the series live up to Ender's game.

[Crazy Tom: C Toon]

Welcome to PWeb Duer0043! and yes, most of the other book live up to EG. Read Ender's Shadow next; it is a parallel novel to Ender's Game, told from Bean's point of view. You would really enjoy it.

[ptr.arkanian]

if you ask me, ender's game is the best sci-fi of all time, and i am a sci-fi geek, a star wars freak, and have studied the sci-fi genre almost religiously over the last year. yes, i might say enders game is slightly predictable when i look back on it, but the first time i read it it blew my mind. i think that's mainly due to the realism in the piece, and the characters have real life flaws. in that way, i would say it isnt predictable because a predictable book would not have a main character as flawed as Ender. and yes, speaker for the dead is beautiful because it is unpredictable. but, i personaly like the shadow series because of how much you can relate it to the world today, and yet it is not what you would expect because the "good" guys arent pure good and they dont always win. so, if you have any complaints about ender's game, read the rest of the series before you misjudge it.

[dylanmcdonald]

Hello. I'm new to this forum and instead of making a new thread about my reaction to Ender's Game, I figured I'd use this thread instead.

I agree and disagree with the OP of this thread. Ender's Game was a bit predictable at times but I would not necessarily call it repetitive, nor a book only to be enjoyed by middle-schoolers. Ender's Game brought back a lot of child hood memories for me when I would think and over-analyze situations or scenarios in life, as I'm sure all of us did. Until I read this book, those thought processes were turning into a stack of books collecting cobwebs and dust in the back of my mind ... like many Sci-Fi writers, Card helps us keep our imaginations strong no matter what age we are when we read it.

Apologies if that doesn't make sense, maybe I'm just being nostalgic.

Great book though, I've already borrowed my copy to a friend of mine.

[Ender751]

I read EG for the first time in the seventh grade. That was almost ten years ago, and it wouldn't surprise me if i read the whole series every year since then. I found that I understood it better and got more out of it everytime I read them. I don't see how anybody can call this a kids-only series

[malay001]

I would say I enjoyed the book overall but like many of you, I thought it was predictable in spots. What I kept thinking was how would things have been different if he and his brother had gotten along? I mean it seems like Peter's mistreatment was a big part of why Ender left home in the first place, so I feel like things would have been totally different, what do you guys think?

[Janus%TheDoorman]

Peter, after maybe Bean, is probably the most divisive character in the series. Part of that's because some people think the Shadow Series retconned his character from a sadistic, bitter Battle School reject scheming for glory into a compassionate genius who simply didn't relate to other people well.

Depending on which character you choose to read him as in Ender's Game, Peter was either Ender's first crucible - a test the Battle School observers didn't expect, but served to temper Ender into a weapon first and foremost, which he spends the rest of the series trying to unmake himself from, or he's on the far end of the spectrum of Valentine who cares too much about everyone and can't bring herself to deliver the sort of crushing victory the IF wanted against the Buggers, Ender who can care about and understand his enemy just enough to understand how to crush them totally, or Peter who's capable of manipulating information and militaries around the globe with a laptop, but can't convince one soul to follow his cause.

Either way, Peter's character is essential to Ender's development. He's either the reason Andrew Wiggin is Ender the Xenocide, or if he were the second interpretation, but able to get along with people, he'd essentially have been Ender himself, and Ender would've never been requested by the IF and drafted up to Battle School

[Psudo]

I know a guy that's very much like Peter: he ranges from indifferent to abusive in his treatment of people generally, but he is completely brilliant (smartest guy I know, and I know a Ph.D. astrophysicist and a rocket scientist), is absolutely obsessive in his career, and is very adept at leadership when the need arises. Secretly, he even cares about people and seeks their best interest in subtle, quiet ways. The primary difference between the two is that Peter wants to fix the world, whereas this guy (with a few narrow exceptions) wants to avoid the world.

I used to think Peter was a bizarre mishmash of extreme personality traits that wasn't really all that realistic. I now believe it's a very accurate portrayal of a very narrow personality type.

Janus talks of how Peter was essential to Ender's development. Ender was absolutely essential to Peter's development. If it hadn't been for Ender being born specifically to successfully save the world where Peter was deemed doomed to fail, Peter would never have had his obsessive need to make a name for himself greater and entirely apart from Ender's legacy. Because he had been passed over he dedicated his life to proving that was a mistake, that he was the better boy.

[lschol123]

I really enjoyed reading this novel, I didn’t really find it repetitive like some of the others have said. It was very interesting and hard for me to see Ender as a six year old when he was entering Battle School. To me he seemed a young adult ready to go and learn how to command. It was interesting to see his life develop and be controlled by teachers. I felt bad for Ender sometimes when he was given battle after battle and when the rules kept changing. I needed to realize that they were just trying to prepare him for the battle with the Buggers. I did feel really bad for him when he killed the entire Bugger race with no knowledge what he was doing. I’m interested in what the outcome would have been if Ender knew what he was doing, and whether he would have been able to succeed in the eyes of the teachers like he did. I’m interested in reading the other novels in the series to see where the story goes and how it continues. Some may think that this is too much of a children’s novel, but I felt there was a lot more depth behind it than some may think. I also found the ideas for technology in the novel were interesting with how advanced they were with the time that the novel was written. It is a pretty old novel, where his ideas seem somewhat advanced for the time it was written. I would love to have something like the desk that Ender had. It seems like it would be cool and a good use, almost like a laptop but not. The simulations that they did in the novel on the computer also seemed pretty cool. We have been able to create simulations for training, and I would like to try a simulation like that sometime.

[Psudo]

I would love to have something like the desk that Ender had.

With the right software, an Apple iPad would work pretty well.

[Janus%TheDoorman]

Frankly the desks seemed at best not quite up to the spec of modern computers. I don't remember them doing anything in particular that would be impossible or even difficult on a laptop. In fact, I think I read through EG at one point intentionally equating the desk to a laptop and was never offput by the desk's capabilities.