Book Review: Ender's Game

I loved this book. I'll admit that it took me a few tries to really get into it, but I was completely absorbed once I got past the first few pages. Ender is not a typical child, by any means. His siblings are also not typical children. None of the children in this novel would be considered normal. They are all in the Battle School for a reason and that is a hard fact to face when you consider their age. They are there to fight and to train and to win a war.

Ender is singled out and separated from the very beginning of the novel, almost in a pure outsider role. He is going to be the best at what he does and his teachers and trainers see this very early on. They make his life difficult in trying to make him the ultimate victor.

The games the children train with are not the most inventive of strategy games, but they are constantly pushed to their limits with them. I think this is a key theme in the novel. Ender quickly realizes that doing something a hundred times the same way and expecting different results will never work out. He knows that you must try new things to get a new outcome.

Ender is also kept in the dark about a lot of the dealings at the Battle School. The teachers purposefully withhold information from him because they don't want to see his demeanor change or see his spirit break. They are using him as a pawn in their war against the Buggers and as much as Ender knows this, he also avoids directly dealing with this information. His day to day survival is more than enough for him to deal with.