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Unimportant Musings

Where an amateur attempts at divining somewhat passable insights.

Currently reading

War and Peace: Translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky
Larissa Volokhonsky, Richard Pevear, Leo Tolstoy
Progress: 112/1273 pages

Book Review: Ender's Game

Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card

Not since the last blue moon has a book taken my attention hostage, but when I got around to picking up my battered copy of Ender's Game, the week since then has seen a return of some of the excitement that petered out after the Harry Potter series ended, along with my childhood, or understanding that George R. R. Martin has kindly seen fit to take all the time, notwithstanding its short supply, in the world in finishing his. But I digress.

 

It is premature, I realize, if not presumptuous, to start talking about which book series is superior, seeing as not only am I not yet even a third of the way into the second book, but I may well be skipping some of what I was heartbroken to read are the more underwhelming ones ahead. As far as first books go, however, you can't go wrong with Ender's Game. With dialogue-only scenes that were at once confusing and intriguing, some of your run-of-the-mill sci-fi clichés that at the same time weren't obnoxiously overdone, character relationships that were deftly introduced and instantly relatable, the book immediately hooked me in from the beginning. But good hooks can be misleading.

Fortunately, with Hogwarts-in-space vibes, ridiculously imaginative battle scenes as well as good writing to match, and a bit of politics for good measure, it kept me reading. If there were flaws, they failed to register a significant enough blip on my radar, too preoccupied as it happily was with the things in Ender's universe that weren't. Having gravitated more towards the fantasy genre, the only other sci-fi book I've read was Dune, and while I've also given that one full marks, as much as it pains to me to choose between the two, Ender's Game beats it out, though by only a nose hair or two, for nothing if not for being tightly written. It's all the more impressive that, being mindful of the controversy surrounding its author, I detected not the slightest hint of it in Ender's Game.