"Ender's Game" by Orson Scott Card; 8/10 [H]

 Read By Harlan Ellison and Stefan Rudnicki

The sci-fi website I read which has hardcore SF fans ranking books had a big to-do a couple of years ago. 

Since the inception of the site, the top-ranked novel had been Frank Herbert's "Dune."  But one day some solitary person voted for "Ender's Game," and like the breath which causes a hurricane, the vote tally of "Dune" was overtaken and surpassed by Card's magnum opus.  The guy who runs the site even posted a little header on the main page that said, "The King Is Dead! Long Live The King!" which I found amusing. 

However.  Those voters were tripping their fucking balls off.

This book is not fit to lick Dune's boot.  It is a single idea, albeit a freaking excellent and bestselling one, built into a story of surpassing suspense, but it never manages to be as brilliant as it thinks it is.  The first time I read "Ender's Game" I was just as blown away as everybody else, but by the time I was having it read to me by Harlan Ellison (who is supposed to be a great sci-fi writer, but I've never read his stuff) and this other chick (second tier solid, both of them, by the way), I had become an older reader and I had read many of Card's other books. 

I just don't think there is nearly as much substance to this book as other people think there is.  It is a plot driven by a great idea with unbelievable characters and drab dialog.   This book just wasn't nearly as good, to me, as I remembered it being.  The battle school scenes and the game itself carry the book, but they aren't nearly as numerous as I had remembered. There is a lot more dialog between the kids than I remembered, and I just didn't think it was very good.

The main problem, sorry to repeat what I've already said, but its a big problem to me, is that Card needs his characters to be sooo brilliant and the ways in which he shows you how brilliant they are wind up being pedestrian, at least to this reviewer.  I was not impressed.  Particularly seeing how Card writes characters and dialog in his other books (which, "Speaker For The Dead" excepted, are nowhere near as good as this one in my opinion).  I think of him as a guy who had a few good ideas, couched them proficiently in a plot that was wildly appealing, and hit the jackpot.  He isn't a genius.

This review is sounding overly negative, but this is all operating on the assumptions that 1) you read this book as a kid, 2) loved it, and 3) haven't reevaluated.  Some books you read as a kid are better left alone as an adult.  I'm not sure that this is one of them, but I'm much less impressed now than I used to be.  Comparisons to "Dune" are laugh-until-you-cry-out-of-sadness-able.

All of this said, I give it an 8.  The games are that good and the plot is that well executed.  Worse for the book, however, I'd bet that a lot of my 8 opinion is still built on nostalgia, even as grumpy as I sound above I still feel the magic of the younger reader encountering this for the first time.  I'll be even farther removed the next time I revisit this, and my opinion might decline even more.

It might seem, now that I have people other than myself reading, that I am trolling with a review like this one, or like "Brave New World," "Fahrenheit 451," or the next review which will follow...  That isn't what I'm doing at all, though, please let me assure you.  I'm rating the books as I really see them, and I flatter myself that I'm independent of mind and spirit.  The reviews themselves sound antagonistic I think because I feel like you really have to justify going so low on such a well-respected and beloved classic, so just keep in mind that while I spend my print panning, I still rated these books at 8, 7, 6, etc.  I'm just trying to be conscientious!