Orson Scott CardReviews

Really interesting! I seldom do scifi, and I really enjoyed the psychological aspects, and the end was unexpected. I listened to most of this on audio, then unexpectedly had time to actually finish reading the paperback. I couldn't put it down! I thought Card's comments following the audio were also worth the listen. I wanted my kids to hear some of his thoughts, but Libby took the audio away too soon. I immediately picked up a copy of the next one, Speaker for the Dead.

I am in my 50s, a woman, NOT the demographic Card was writing to, and I highly recommend this book. It challenges the conventional education industry.

(The movie was as bad as the book is good.)

bello e disturbante
ritmo eccellente

TRAMA E SPOILER
bambino genio viene addestrato (nel peggior modo) a comandare la flotta contro invasori alieni
sorella genio e fratello maggiore genio si ingegnano per ottenere potere governativo

orrendo! davvero
tutta la parte sul pianeta Path mi ha fatto star male di stomaco
tutto il resto l'ho odiato

il 50% è il continuo ripetersi di riassunti dei tre libri precedenti
il 40% è il continuo ripetersi di un paio di concetti (forse 3, non di più)
il 5% è il continuo ripetersi di atteggiamenti, zero distinzione tra Novinha, Quara, Jane ne tra Ender, Peter, Wang-Mu

TRAMA E SPOILER:
c'è il restante 5% ole!!!

bello!!!! completamente diverso dal primo
uno di quei libri che puoi rileggere ad ogni lustro
Orson Scott Card entra a pieno titolo fra i miei autori del cuore

Thought at first it was going to be good but it bogged down in repetition of action and interaction and became boring and bleak until near the end. Would have been a better book with at least 100 fewer pages.

The 1991 introduction was very interesting. It told how Orson Scott Card's career path veered toward play writing, the book came to be written, and the reaction to it, both positive and some very negative reactions.

Man tends to behave abominably towards his fellow creatures. By chapter 6 I was wondering if perhaps it would be better for the Buggers to win than the humans.

Ender is observant, a quick learner.

Friends turn out to be fickle or untrustworthy.

The last chapter was the best chapter. It (at least partially) made up for the deceitfulness of the adults and the meanness of the children. Although the last chapter was “redeeming,” yet there were some things in that chapter that went far beyond the usual suspension of disbelief. Since those concern the end, I placed those notes in a spoiler section of the review.


After Ender won, the prohibition against having more than two children was repealed because people from Earth set out to colonize other worlds. But wait, wasn’t it terribly expensive to just lift one person off the earth?

“Between 1970 and 2000, the cost to launch a kilogram to space remained fairly steady, with an average of US$18,500 per kilogram. When the space shuttle was in operation, it could launch a payload of 27,500 kilograms for $1.5 billion, or $54,500 per kilogram. For a SpaceX Falcon 9, the rocket used to access the ISS, the cost is just $2,720 per kilogram.” Note: The ISS is not outer space. Getting totally beyond Earth’s gravity is more expensive than getting to the ISS. Let’s do a calculation. Assuming a person has negligible luggage. With luggage 80 kg at $2,000 per kg is $160,000. Not only would a person need personal effects, but they also need a lot of food and facilities to care for their bodily needs. (Yes, they migh grow food - that requires energy, which isn’t free either.)

The buggers “knew” several years in advance that Ender would defeat them. Thus, they took some actions in advance. Okay, the ability to prophesy might not be so unusual. This goes beyond prophecy, this was the domain of a seer - seeing into the future.

They created the environment on their planet that he would recognize. They hacked the training game that Ender played inserting into it scenes on their planet that they he would later see and recognize. Hacking the computers of a completely different civilization, with totally different language and technology. They didn’t even use language!

They communicated mentally with him perhaps 5 years after they were all extinct, claiming to be a peaceful society. Their home planet was blown up into subatomic particles. Where again was this bugger planet that Ender temporarily lived on?

In such a large universe it’s amazing that we managed to locate their home planet.

Communicating mentally with another species from another planet years after being all dead? We can’t even reliably communicate with people of our own species. Not only that, they “knew” his future actions - that he would be “there” to receive that communication.

Tell me again about those bugger warships in the first invasion. Granted we initiated the 2nd and 3rd invasions. Still, they had warships that were terribly effective. Anyone familiar with the “arms race” knows that large weapons are not cheap to develop. You don’t spend massive resources developing weapons without a reason.

Were the buggers and the humans the only sentient creatures in the universe? The humans went around inhabiting former bugger worlds. Why didn’t the humans inhabit world that had not previously had buggers on them? Had the buggers taken over the whole known universe eliminating all other sentient species?

Thus, I conclude that Ender was probably deceived into believing that the buggers were a peaceful society. If so, then it is a scary thought that he was induced into taking that cocoon to plant on another world.

Read Speaker for the Dead again and pretend this and Xenocide never existed.½

It is amazing how in a book this long so little actually happened.
Nonsensical pseudo-intellectual masturbation; all the appearance of profound thoughts without any profundity to be seen, for hundreds of pages.

Is this really the same author as Speaker for the Dead, a book that actually had something to say while simultaneously actually telling a story?

Card in the years since I read this revealed himself as a horrible human being, too. Don't waste your time or mental energy.

As a fervent aficionado of science fiction and a professor of English, I find Orson Scott Card’s “Ender’s Game” to be a seminal work in the genre, deftly blending the intricacies of human psychology with the grandeur of space opera. The novel’s exploration of strategic warfare and the ethical quandaries of leadership through the young, prodigious Ender Wiggin is both profound and provocative. Card’s eloquent prose and the depth of his character development invite readers to ponder the moral implications of war and the price of genius. It’s a compelling narrative that not only entertains but also challenges the intellect, making “Ender’s Game” an essential read for both enthusiasts and scholars of speculative fiction.

July 2020 - listened to this again when older, and it was a lot worse than I remember. Sad how some things age badly. The audiobook in particular makes the writing hard to bear.

Update: Listened to this again with Mariah, finishing on 7/9/2020. Overall, the book is definitely less impactful via audiobook, when I’m no longer a child, and when I already know the main plot/plot twist elements. Still fun, but didn’t love it. Curious if I’ll still love Ender’s Shadow on audiobook - thats next!

This book was a pretty random read because I found it in a bookstore and had never heard of it before (which surprised me). It has been a while since I read a Card book, but I really thought that I had read most of them (except his more religious stuff). The book was fun to read but didn't have the best plot. I think it was more witty than logical, but it was still a lot of fun and I enjoyed it quite a bit. Also, the underlying message about romance with Madeleine and Sally was pretty interesting, so it's worth checking the book out if you feel like you just broke up with the perfect person... May set your perspective straight. It certainly brought plenty of thoughts about my life back to my mind.

F/SF

F/SF

This book is incredible! It's a fascinating look into the hemogeny and Ender's family of origin. Also it was really interesting to look at Ender's life after his reputation had been destroyed. It's not really a .5 book because it has two stories about Ender's father, one about Ender in training, and one 300 years after.

This book is one of the most important books to me. It came to me at a formative time and gave me a character I could see myself in - his brilliancy, his exhaustion, and lately his guilt and grief. This book will never leave my shelf, and I will continue to recommend it, with a caveat about the author's views.

If he can speak for the buggers, then he can speak for me.

I'm a huge fan of Ender's Game, and everything Ender related. Its very likely you are as well, if you're reading OSC unless you picked this book up by accident. I'm even a fan of quite a bit of OSC's short fiction. Despite some of the deeply ingrained cultural ideas of Mormonism, I think there's a lot of thought and complexity going on in a lot of what he's written, reflecting some real internal strife.
Seventh Son is...none of that. The general idea of old american (and apparently in later books, other cultural traditions') folklore and folk-magic by and large being real is a great conceit to start from. There's a lot to explore, including the clash of more organized religion and the folk traditions. The non-white traditions and peoples aren't handled to well in this initial book, though I'm told that improves somewhat over the course of the series. I would even have settled for a more fantastic and straightforward treatment of Mormon beliefs as magic.
Unfortunately, what we mostly end up with is a relatively shallow good vs. evil (couched as 'maker' vs. 'unmaker') story, where the both the good and bad guys are relatively one-dimensional, lacking the ethical and moral grey areas OSC handles so well in Ender. It also ends up really heavily skewed towards christian beliefs and mythos, with even the maker and unmaker ideas being very thinly veiled christ/antichrist or divine/satan metaphors. It feels a little like religious propaganda as it stands. Making it focus on a child hero, like Ender, was also an odd choice, given that that there is none of the same sort of ethical struggle surrounding using a child as a savior regardless of the personal costs.
Unless it was going to be more anthology series, with each book touching on different tales of folk traditions in the americas (or elsewhere) being real, I think this might have also been better off wrapped up in one, longer novel rather than the extended series.
Its a pretty light/rapid read, but probably not worth seeking out.

Fantastic collection overall. Its not straight fantasy, the various (very successful) authors involved were given a lot of latitude in interpreting 'dragon' as a theme for the collection, so hopefully there's something here for a variety of fiction readers.
There were, for me, a couple of low points. Not necessarily poorly written stories, but ones that didn't hold my attention as well (as I *was* here for the dragons). Roger Stine's 'Thermals of August' springs to mind, which was primarily about hangliders. "Soldatenmangel" was also on the strange side, and a little goofy, though still entertaining.
Overall, great fantasy read though.

(3.85 Stars)

I forgot how much I loved this series!

OSC is a great writer, and this is such an interesting story. This book fills in a gap between other major works and really grows Ender/Andrew as a character.

I don't know if I just never noticed it in other books or if OSC has inserted his religious beliefs in this book more than his others (keep in mind it has been several years since I last read an OSC book). It isn't to the point where I feel like it is being shoved down my throat, but it is there, and unnecessarily so... in most cases.

I simply love this book. I first read it when I was 14. I couldn't stop reading and the moment I finished I started reading it again from the very beginning. It's a strange, twisted and cruel story at times, I don't like any of the characters in the book, still - it's one of my most favourite books ever. Five stars.

I read this for the "A Genre You Don't Normally Care For" part of my 2020 reading challenge. I'm not usually into science fiction or space or aliens, but this book was fantastic. It's still a bit hard to believe it was 6 year olds accomplishing these things, but I enjoyed the characters and the story didn't end up feeling that far-fetched. The ending surprised me, but it resolved nicely and I'm looking forward to book 2.

I am seriously digging this series.

Really enjoyed this one. Off to book #2

Still love it!