Ender's game is, in some ways, quite a pleasure to read. The writing is technically competent: things, events, people and their interactions are all well visualised. The plot flows relatively well, with changes in perspective being well managed and clear. This is largely the reason the book deserves the second star. Unfortunately, the actual material of the book - the adventures of the child genius Ender and his child genius siblings, is fairly poor, and I can only conclude that the book won it's Hugo and Nebula awards more due to the paucity of competition than any technical brilliance.
The characterisation of the book manages to be both simplistic, but at the same time deeply inconsistent. The children - and bear in mind this book deals largely with prepubescent-to-pubescent children - tend to near-robotic rationality, interspersed seemingly at random with sporadic outbreaks of normal childlike behaviour.
People are either monstrous, such as Peter, or Ender's various bullies, or they are saintly, like the much-persecuted Ender and his sister. The only middle ground is occupied by Ender's parents, who swiftly depart the scene in a display of too-convenient moral cowardice, and Ender's tutors, who's abuse and neglect of Ender is supposed to transform him into some sort of super-leader by isolating him from his peers and forcing him to develop his talents.
In reality, Ender is being saved by an extremely strong dose of author fiat, as actions which would actually stunt a child's intellectual development (stress hormones, social isolation and fatigue) somehow magically cause genius to sprout.
Frequent mention is made of Alexander, though the author's historical illiteracy is such that he does not appear to have actually read Arrian, appearing to not realise that Alexander was raised in an environment of immense wealth and privilege, amongst a cadre of young men he could trust deeply, while being closely tutored by the finest mind of his age, as opposed to being largely isolated from those he was supposed to lead, allowed no personal possessions, subject to harassment and violence and repeatedly subject to stress and fatigue.
The one similarity with Alexander shared by Ender is the weakness of his opponents: Ender seemingly being the only boy amongst his peers capable of adapting to zero-gravity fighting and optimising one's positioning around the mechanics of the game they play. It is perhaps unfair to criticise Scott Card on this, as he lived in an era before mass online gaming, and likely did not know exactly how efficient large groups of people given a competitive incentive are at developing novel ways of doing so.
Humanity's adversaries are inanely named "The buggers", a reference to their insectoid origins. This absurd title quite neatly destroys any menace or gravitas they might hold over the reader. The reasons for the conflict are expropriated from Joe Haldeman's Forever War: the hive mind species's inability to communicate with an individual, while the insectoid nature and the hive mind are taken from Heinlein's Starship Troopers (both dramatically superior books)
The books utterly break down in the last stage, as Ender begins to properly prepare for fighting the enemy proper. Scott Card's complete lack of knowledge of either the theory of zero-g combat nor the basics of air warfare is laid painfully bare for all to see. The reader winds up being told of Ender's genius, not shown it
(Spoiler Alert)
The final setpiece degenerates into a farce, as Ender's genius for reading people's dishonesty suddenly fails him at the most convenient and implausible moment, and earth's greatest tactician defeats the buggers with a massed frontal assault with obsolete ships, breaking the enemy line by sheer force of deus ex machina to deliver their payload of doomsday weapons onto the enemy's homeworld, wiping out the bugger queen's who have been conveniently concentrated in one place, despite their knowing that humanity has literal planet-killing weapons on their warships.
The elongated epilogue and setup for the second novel is actually far more readable, and partly contribute to the book's second star.
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![Ender's Game: Book 1 of the Ender Saga (The Ender Quartet series) by [Orson Scott Card]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51yOjjGzSyL._SY346_.jpg)
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