Year: 1985
Pages: 324
Part of Series: Ender's Saga #1/6
Reading Time: 11 days (2021)
Rating: 9 Stars
Ender is a very good novel. It aged well. It's refreshing.
Basically we follow Ender as he is being trained to be a succesful commander of a starship in the war against one enemy we don't really know except they called them "Buggers".
Having seen the trailer with that main character who is at least 12 or 13 really defeats the purpose. In the book, our main protagonist starts at young age of 6 and go all the way into 11 by the end of the novel. No more no less. All his tragedies, adversities are really new because we can't imagine a 6 or 7 year old being the way he is. It's like imagine being Alexander the Great but at 7 against 12 (in the movie). There's a big difference....
But we don't follow only Ender but also at some minimal parts we follow his sister Valentine and brother Peter - to me, this could have been achieved in a different way like two novels but Alas, that's the way. So, the story of Ender was really interesting but the story of his brother and sister was really small. Really wanted a bit more, maybe in the next novels.
There are many themes here, the war children, the innocence vs experience; the young vs old, moral sense and how violence and bullying can make other people grow in a good way.
But there are something that upsets me and that is the ending... too fast, too much in twelve or thirteen pages. It could easily have been one additional novel. It made me wanna read the next novels. (at least the ender stuff; I also have the shadow but let us see...)
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