In this intense and captivating science/fantasy fiction, Andrew 'Ender' Wiggins is only six years old when he is chosen by the futuristic government to defeat the aliens who have previously attacked earth twice. He is forced to leave his parents, brother Peter (whom he hates) and sister Valentine (whom he loves), to train with all the other new recruits called 'launchies' in the space station known as the Battle Room. Ender immediately feels and endures the escalating isolation and hardship the training entails. Does he have what it takes to become commander and finally defeat the 'buggers'?
"I've watched through his eyes, I've listened through his ears, and I tell you he's the one. Or at least as close as we're going to get."(opening lines)
'I'm sorry if you're lonely and afraid. But the buggers are out there. Ten billion, a hundred billion, a million billion of them, for all we know. With as many ships, for all we know. With weapons we can't understand. And a willingness to use those weapons to wipe us out. It isn't the world at stake, Ender. Just us. Just humankind. As far as the rest of the biosphere is concerned, we could be wiped out and it would adjust, it would get on with the next step in evolution. But humanity doesn't want to die. As a species, we have evolved to survive. And the way we do it is by straining and straining and, at last, every few generations, giving birth to genius. The one who invents the wheel. And light. And flight. The one who builds a city, a nation, an empire.'(35)
'Dap came to the door that night and moved quietly among the beds, touching a hand there, a forehead there. Where he went there was more crying, not less. The touch of kindness in this frightening place was enough to push some over the edge into tears. Not Ender, though. When Dap came, his crying was over, and his face was dry. It was the lying face he presented to Mother and Father, when Peter had been cruel to him and dared not to let it show. Thank you for this, Peter. For dry eyes and silent weeping. You taught me how to hide anything I felt. More than ever. I need that now.'(45)
'And instead of pushing his face into one of the liquids, he kicked one over, then the other, and dodged the Giant's huge hands as the Giant shouted, "Cheater, cheater!" He jumped at the Giant's face, clambered up his lip and nose, and began to dig in the Giant's eye. The stuff came away like cottage cheese, and as the Giant screamed, Ender's figure burrowed into the eye, climbed right in, burrowed in and in.'(64-65)
"Colonel Graff, the games have always been run fairly before. Either random distribution of stars, or symmetrical."
"Fairness is a wonderful attribute, Major Anderson. It has nothing to do with war."(97)
"It doesn't mean he's crazy, Dink."
"I know, you've been here a year, you think these people are normal. Well, they're not. We're not. I look in the library, I call up books on my desk. Old ones, because they won't let us have anything new, but I've got a pretty good idea what children are, and we're not children. Children can lose sometimes, and nobody cares. Children aren't in armies, they aren't commanders, they don't rule over forty other kids, it's more than anybody can take and not get crazy.'(108)
'You've been isolating the boy. Maybe he's writing for the end of this world, the Battle School. Or maybe it's about the end of the world he grew up with us a little boy, his home, coming here. Or maybe it's his way of coping with having broken up so many other kids here. Ender's sensitive kid, you know, and he's done some pretty bad things to people's bodies, he might be wishing for the end of that world."
"Or none of the above."
"The mind game is a relationship between the child and the computer. Together they create stories. The stories are true, in the sense that they reflect the reality of the child's life. That's all I know.'(121)
'Writing was something Val did better than Peter. They both knew it. Peter had even named it once, when he said that he could always see what other people hated most about themselves, and bully them, while Val could always see what other people liked best about themselves, and flatter them. It was a cynical way of putting it, but it was true. Valentine could persuade other people to her point of view -- she could convince them that they wanted what she wanted them to want, Peter, on the other hand, could only make them fear what he wanted them to fear.'(127)
'Isolation -- is the optimum environment for creativity.'(149)
'And the despair filled him again. Now he knew why. Now he knew what he hated so much. He had no control over his own life. They ran everything. They made all the choices. Only the game was left to him, that was all, everything else was them and their rules and their plans and lessons and programs, and all he could do was go this way or that way in battle. The one real thing, the one precious real thing was his memory of Valentine, the person who loved him before he ever played a game, who loved him whether there was a bugger was or not...'(151)
'Well, what I've done to you this day, Bean, I've done. But I'll be watching you, more compassionately than you know, and when the time is right you'll find that I'm your friend, and you are the soldier you want to be.'(168)
"Two faces of the same coin. And I am the metal in between." Even as she said it, she wondered if it was true. She had shared so much with Peter these last few years that even when she thought she despised him, she understood him. While Ender had been only a memory till now. A very small, fragile boy who needed her protection. Not this cold-eyed, dark-skinned manling who killed wasps with his fingers. Maybe he and Peter and I are all the same, and have been all along. Maybe we only thought we were different from each other out of jealousy.'(236)
"In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in the very moment I also love him. I think it's impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves. And then, in the very moment when I love them --"(238)
'Billions of those connections between human beings. That's what you're fighting to keep alive.'(244)
'He had long since learned that when something unusual was going on, something that was part of someone else's plan and not his own, he would find out more information by waiting than by asking. Adults almost always lost their patience before Ender did.'(260)
'Welcome to the human race. Nobody controls his own life, Ender. The best you can do is to choose to fill the roles given you by good people, by people who love you.'(313)
a Tor Book edition
324 pages
Book borrowed from the library
Book qualifies for: 100 + Reading Challenge
Book idea from Jillian @ Random Ramblings (thanks!). Her review is HERE.
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