Ender's Game

by Orson Scott Card

Genre: Science fiction
Age group: 11-12+

It's hundreds of years into the future, and aliens, buggers, have attacked Earth multiple times... Earth's resources are running out and her army commanders are running out of options. The buggers are strong, and seem to share one mind—they communicate almost instantaneously. It will be hard for the humans to beat them. They've taken to breeding military geniuses to defeat the aliens, and are waiting for the one who will end the buggers once and for all...
And they want Ender Wiggin, a boy of only six. They want him to skip ahead to battle school and become the one they want. He's stronger than his compassionate sister Valentine and more composed than his psychopath brother Peter—the government believes he is the one. And Ender is going to try to be that.
Battle school isn't easy for Ender, but he excels in everything he does. Colonel Graff, the principal of battle school, has taken a shine to Ender, and he gets promoted and promoted. But when he faces the Simulation, a series of games to help him train and get better at fighting, he is sometimes forced to do things he doesn't want to do. As Ender is pushed further and further into this new world of competition, danger and desperation, he tries to hold the pressure... But little does he know, the worst is yet to come.

As I usually do, I really liked this book. Firstly, the end is so surprising. I was totally not expecting what happened to happen. It works so much better than if the end part was just cut off and everything was happy ever after. The end goes deeper than that. Some people might say this book is a giant cliche, what with the aliens attacking and all that. IT ISN'T. Ender's Game still focuses on saving the world, but it's also about human nature. Through the action and fight scenes, we get to see inside Ender's head and watch as he's handling the pressure in the only way he knows how. Sure, this book may not be as action-packed as other books, but that doesn't make it boring. It just means that it goes deeper than the superficial violence and romance. (There isn't really much romantic stuff in Ender's Game, though.) This could be considered a book about aliens and exploding starships—or it could be considered a book about ethics and human nature. It's really up to you.