The Hugo Award-winning novel Ender's Game, now available as an audiobook, is the first book in a popular series that follows the eponymous Ender, his brother Peter and sister Valentine, as well as a number of other characters in a sprawling and intriguing story that spans thousands of years. While we won't try to determine which is best, Ender's Game is likely the best known of the series, and for good reason. Once you hear it, you won't soon forget it.
Ender's Game follows Ender Wiggin, the youngest of three children, born by special government decree because most families are not allowed more than two children. For some time, Earth has been at war with the Formics, a bug-like alien species that said 'hi' to humanity by killing thousands. The military hopes that Ender will be the great military leader to defeat the Formics once and for all. While he is still quite young, they send him to Battle School, an intense training program that molds him into a soldier, tactician, and leader.
All of this training eventually leads Ender to his final test, a massive battle simulation which will have lasting consequences for him, for humanity, and for the Formics. Fans of The Hunger Games will recognize some of the themes in Ender's Game, though they are very different books. The story is intense, unsparing, and always gripping.
Orson Scott Card is an American science fiction writer. Besides Ender's Game and its sequels, he has written a number of other science fiction series and standalone novels. A well-known figure in the world of science fiction and fantasy, he initially conceived of Ender's Game as a short story, later transforming it into a novel.
In order
to develop a secure defense against a hostile alien race’s next attack,
government agencies breed child geniuses and train them as soldiers. A
brilliant young boy, Andrew “Ender” Wiggin lives with his kind but distant
parents, his sadistic brother Peter, and the person he loves more than anyone
else, his sister Valentine. Peter and Valentine were candidates for the
soldier-training program but didn’t make the cut, so young Ender is the Wiggin
drafted to the orbiting Battle School for rigorous military training.
Ender’s
skills make him a leader in school and respected in the Battle Room, where
children play at mock battles in zero gravity. Yet growing up in an artificial
community of young soldiers, Ender suffers greatly from isolation, rivalry from
his peers, pressure from the adult teachers, and an unsettling fear of the
alien invaders. His psychological battles include loneliness, fear that he is
becoming like the cruel brother he remembers, and fanning the flames of
devotion to his beloved sister.
Is Ender
the general Earth needs?
Ender is not the only result of the genetic
experiments. The war with the Buggers has been raging for a hundred years, and
the quest for the perfect general has been underway for almost as long. Ender’s
two older siblings are every bit as unusual as he is but in very different
ways. Between the three of them lie the abilities to remake a world. If the
world survives, that is.
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