Rating: 
Summary: Ender's Game Succeeds on Two Levels
Review: Since you are most likely going to read Ender's Game yourself, I'm not going to bore you with a summary. Really, aside from deep characters and a wonderful plot, Ender's Game is a brief read, yet endlessly satisfying. On one hand, it is a straight forward science fiction story (one of the best) that will please any younger reader. On the other, it is a human drama that deals with much more than starships and space battles. Ender's Game also thrusts unique characters (in some ways, not too unlike us) into difficult situations that rarely have the outcome we expect. It gives older readers so much to think about and leaves you literally screaming for more books about Ender. Orson Scott Card keeps your eyes riveted to each page and eager to see what happens next. Even if you don't like science fiction, you will probably be pleased with the skill and dedication that clearly went into the writing of this book.
Rating:
Summary: too bad there's only 5 stars :)
Review: 'Ender's Game' by Orson Scott Card is the story of Ender Wiggin, a little boy. The government has limits on the population in this future, and families are only allowed 2 children. Ender is a 'third', and so he is always picked on. He has his monitor on longer than anyone has, so he is picked on for that also. His older brother Peter is a violent yet genius boy who skins squirrels and threatens murder, yet apoligizes in the middle of the night. Valentine, his sister, is a pacifist and extremely sweet and caring. When Ender is taken away to Battle School, which is in space, to be trained for war, she cries "I'll love you forever! Come back to me!" At Battle School, Colonel Graff knows that they have little time to find and train the military genius who will lead Earth's fleet against the enemy - the Buggers, or the PC term Formics. He mounts everything against Ender from the first day on the shuttle because he believes Ender is the only one smart enough to save them, and he is a perfect mix of his brother and sister. Ender is years younger than all of the other students, yet he is placed into an army when he should still be a Launchie, or just starting out. Soon after, he is given an army of his own - Dragon. It is thrown back into the mix of armies after being removed years before owing to "accidents" that we don't hear much about. He is given supposedly the worst army in the school and he rises to the top of the standings, with his whole army in the top 50. He is pushed though, when Colonel Graff begins testing, if not abusing him, by giving him battles every day and weeks sooner than normal, 2 battles a day, and then even 2 armies at once. He breaks, and then is whisked away to Command School, which is hidden on a secret asteroid. He is trained by the famous Mazer Rackham, who beat the Buggers in the first invasion, to beat them again. Alongside Ender's story, there is also a story on Earth. Ender's brother and sister have been watching world movements and have predicted that war is going to break out on Earth the moment the Buggers are defeated. They log onto discussion forums on the nets and write articles about what is happening. They are 2 separate people though, and pretend not to know of each other, under the names of Locke and Demosthenes. This is an amazing book, as you can tell by my long review. It is my favorite book, and I read it a few times ever year. I first read it when I was about 13, and loved it. This year I read it, being almost 16, and loved it on an entirely different level - my eyes tearing at the end. I think that this book can be read by anyone, and loved by anyone. The characters are wonderful, multi-faceted, and all too human sometimes. Ender changes dramatically throughout the book, not surprising with all of the emotional tests he is forced through. This novel is BRILLIANT.
Rating: 
Summary: Preying upon our insecurities
Review: While some thematic content is similar to another Sci-Fi military classic, Starship Troopers, Ender's Game approaches the topic of what constitutes a great military strategist from a unique perspective; that of a child. It does an excellent job of presenting the duality behind human behavior and our ability to turn our good and bad buttons on and off. Scott Card also examines the aspects of fear and weakness and how they are developmentally related to violence and war. Throughout the book, there is a comparative occuring between Ender's experiences in boot camp and the war with the buggers. His later regret over the violence committed in the name of his own self preservation, mirrors the devastating consequences of the war. Ender and the human race learn that self preservation often comes at a high price that unfortunately can never be refunded.
Rating:
Summary: Ender's Game is one of my top ten Sci-Fi novels
Review: I've loved science fiction since I first discovered Asimov and Heinlein while I was in junior high. As the greats passed from our midst (Asimov, Heinlein and Herbert) I wondered who would come along to fill those big space boots. Well, Orson Scott Card is doing a pretty good job of that. Ender's Game is on my top-ten list of sci-fi novels and here's why: The novel (which was expanded from a short story) deals with a future in which Earth has been threatened by an alien race of Bugs. They nearly wiped out the planet, but for a seemingly all-but-impossible victory won by a nearly-cashiered junior officer named Mazer Rackham. Now, the Bugs threaten again, and the generals and leaders of Earth's greatest alliance of nations is looking to train young military geniuses to lead the next assault. Ender Wiggin is a "third" or a fluke. He's a the third child in a family with the allotted two kids, in a world where having more than two is against the law. But he's no illegal child--he was conceived by offical mandate, since the elder Wiggin kids had military promise but didn't quite come up to snuff. Ender is chosen to go to Battle School, an artificial asteroid in space where young prodigies are trainied in military tactics,strategy,history and everything else they would need to become the next Alexander or Napoleon. This is sci-fi at its very best. The characters are well-drawn, though not terribly deep. The real jewel in these books is the plot and action. If you like military strategy and battle scenes, this is for you. The scenes in Battle School are really compelling. The chief activity in the school is a kind of team sport, where armies of students lead by the best kids who are chosen as their commanders, fight in zero gravity. These scenes are so vivid, you can see the action as if it were a movie in your head. And you will be able to see it as a movie on the big screen. Orson Scott Card has written a screenplay version and Chartoff Productions and Fresco Pictures will produce it. With Card's ability to write action scenes, I think the screenplay will be fantastic. Couple that with state-of-the-art special effects and maybe the film will come up to the excellence of this novel. There are two sets of sequels to Ender's Game: Speaker for the Dead and the series leading up to Xenocide were the first "trilogy" Card wrote. But recently, he wrote a simultaneous sequel, Ender's Shadow, which features Bean, the brilliant small soldier who is Ender's unwilling disciple. This book is as brilliant as Ender's Game. It's followed by "Shadow of the Hegemon" and a soon-to-be released additional novel. These are so good, I can hardly believe it. Don't miss any of them.
Rating:
Summary: Card is a genius!
Review: This is the best Science Fiction Book i have ever read. It captivates the reader's interest and there are suprises and plot twists. It is a highly original plot and executed very well. The book has a good resolution and the very end was a nice lead-on to Speaker for the Dead...I am a girl and have no complaints about the book. Women arent allowed into battle in real life, so where's your complaint? And the training they were undergoing had almost everything to do with physical exercises as well as mental exercises. While i agree that girls couldve done everything that the boys did, it's a work of fiction...Good work Card
Rating:
Summary: Haha. Defending.
Review: Obviously, I must be pretty bored to sift through the majority of these reviews. I'm responding more towards the negative reviews, because there is no need for yet ANOTHER review praising Ender's Game and addressing its plot. (Nobody's gonna read it anyway). I've read Ender's Game in the course of two days, and I hadn't seen any flaws--reading these reviews though, very good points were brought up. Card's lack of literary gimmicks has been criticized. However, this was what made this book refreshing, the type of book you can pick up to read again and again. The prose was /very/ simple. My brother in 7th grade read it easily and without questions. Neither do the readers receive descriptions about Ender's physical appearance, or, for that matter, his siblings'. I don't know about you, but this wasn't something I was preoccupied with. I was more embroiled in the mental conflicts. There were also several complaints about Ender's one-dimensional personality. This too, made me think. This technique has been effectively employed in other books: fleshing out a character solely through actions and speech. This makes Ender a difficult character. However, it does not make his experiences any less dramatic. On the contrary, the readers' attention is drawn towards the contrast between Ender's actions and thoughts. For an example, we see him cry, but we don't get an inside view of what's going on in his mind. This causes his actions to be all the more starkly vivid. Another small error is that the entire time, we are set up for this huge battle with the Buggers, the supposed climax, but we never reach it. I can only excuse this with the possible fact that Card's main focus was the psychology of Ender's growth. Card has a very clear understanding of the way a human mind, be it a child's or an adult's, works. The ending, although, was not surprising. It was, as mentioned in some of the reviews, a letdown, for the previously stated reason. By this point though, the reader focuses on the stress Ender and his commanders are under, rather than the actual battles. All in all, this is a book everyone should pick up. It's definitely on my "favorite books" list. It requires a bit of a suspension of disbelief, but once you get past that, the rest is one enjoyable ride. A page-turner. I intend to start the companion series, the series about Bean. One last note: The adult reviewers who say something along the lines of "leaving this read for the teens", as if implying that only teens, severely lacking in intelligence, would enjoy Ender's Game, are patronizing. Gets on my (insert curse) nerves. The book may be simple in its prose, but it has a fairly good grasp of concepts and is far from "See Spot Run". So please, for the love of God, /stop it/.
Rating:
Summary: The best of the best
Review: Ender is a young boy who faces all kinds of demons in this book. In the not so distant future, aliens have already attacked once, and are about to attack again. Those in charge are scrambling to find someone to save the world against the aliens, and Ender is the one they find.
Ender's Game is entertaining and well written, but those who read it purely for entertainment value will also find something much greater. This book forces you to think about some critical issues.
To put it simply, this book is one of the best there is.
Rating:
Summary: My favorite sci-fi book ever . . .
Review: But also intersting on a whole other level. The psychology and motivations for the characters are complex, and aside from Ender's time at Battle school, the conversations and writings of Valentine and Peter are equally as interesting. Ender is a character which one can never forget. What more can I say? Orson Scott Card is a master of writing, and Ender's Game (as well as all of it's sequels) is proof of it, tracing the development of a taunted "third" to a military genius caught up in a giant scheme.
Rating: 
Summary: Blah. Overrated!
Review: This book was alright, it was not very good, but I would not say it was absolutly terrible either. It kept me flipping the pages. However, I still have a few bones to pick. The author's writing style is not very smooth and his prose is clumsy at times. It is not the fact that it is simple, and personally I like simple as oppsed to literary gimmericks, but it is that he muddles it and it does not flow properly. He does not do too good a job at painting visual images either. In fact, he does not even describe his characters physically once except to mention that one boy was black and a man is fat, which is a little suspicious. The pyhscology of the book and the mental struggles were not original or captivating enough to make up for lack of imigery either. The personalities of the characters were also quite steriotypical and clice, and none of them were too deep. It is a very typical plot and did not enlighten me, and was highly unrealistic. I suggest that Mr. Card read the Art of War by Sun Tzu to really know how battle tactics work. Finallly, it is sexist. Once it is stated that women have too many years of evolution against them. Excuse me? In the battle school, there is only the one token female student, and the students are all refered to as "the boys" and the military people are "the men" and quite honestly, what they lean there has nothing to do with physical strengh and more with brains and quick reflexes so there is no sufficent reason for the lack of female students. That is unacceptable.
Rating:
Summary: Real Science Fiction
Review: Common Science Fiction is about space ships and aliens. REAL science fiction take a scientific principle or theory and develops a plausible story around it. Orson Scott Card has done a superb job of creating a REAL science fiction work of art. I put Card in the same category with Arthur C. Clark and Isaac Asimov.
Only 16 times since 1965 have both the Hugo award and the Nebula award been given to an author for the same novel in the same year. "Ender's Game" (1985) and the sequel "Speaker for the Dead" (1986), both by Orson Scott Card, are two of the 16.
Also highly recommended is "Ender's Shadow". "Ender's Shadow" is not a sequel, but a companion novel to "Ender's Game". A companion novel is a retelling of the same story, but from another character's perspective. Easy to say - difficult to do! Card showed his real genius here. Although you know how it will end, you are still on the edge of your seat.
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