★★★★★ Brutal, cruel, brilliant

Ender's Game

Orson Scott Card

** spoiler alert **

I probably read Ender’s Game around 1986, when it won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards for best novel. Many of the books that win the Hugo are duds, and the same is true of the Nebula, but it has always been my experience that any book that wins both is worth reading. Ender’s Game is MORE than worth reading. I enjoyed it tremendously on the first read, and the second. Rather than try to explain why, I am going to recount one incident from early in the book that I believe catches the essence of what makes it great. Most of Ender's (Ender is the nickname of Andrew Wiggin) schoolmates hate him because he is different. Some older boys take him into a bathroom to beat him up. Ender fights back, gets the ringleader down, and savagely beats him, a boy named Stilson. (Stilson eventually dies as a result of the beating.) Ender is subsequently questioned by authorities

“Tell me why you kept on kicking him. You had already won.”

“Knocking him down won the first fight. I wanted to win all the next ones, too."

"I had to win all the next fights, too." is Ender in a nutshell. It's brutal and cruel and irrefutable.

This sort of logic explains, I think, why so many people can't stand Ender’s Game. I sympathize -- I do. But I think it's brilliant.

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