Ender's Game: A Novel Review

I was wondering when you guys would get around to writing book reviews. Ender's Game is my brother's favorite book so I may have to borrow it. Thanks for giving me something to do this weekend.

Hi Kenny F. The review was a pretty good one but I'm still waiting to hear about a new Game Jams video. I don't want to derail this topic but I'm just curious and too lazy to hunt for the Game Jams topic.

It's cool, GameJams is on break until maybe a week more!

The reviews are no substitute for a Game Jams episode but they are decent fill ins while you gather your energy for another series of music videos.

There's a few opinions that I disagree with, like "When it comes to taking a look at literature, much more emphasis must be placed on studying the story and characters since they are what is central to a novel. Unlike a movie or video game, which can both get away with being void of either element, the success of a novel is dependant on whether the author is able to tell a convincing story, and develop believable characters."
Most movies are crucified for lacking either element, and video games are now put under heavy scrutiny for not telling stories.

I'm also curious about your thoughts on the moral ambiguity of Ender's Game in which the United States military has made it suggested reading for Officers, and many leftist thinkers believe that Card too easily dismisses Ender's acts of violence and genocide as being innocent mistakes.

It's not a bad review but I felt that some additional depth would have done the book more justice. In the mean time could you go back and fix the links in your review because none of them appear to be working. I think that the http:// stuff is messed up.

Sure thing, dude! I'll go back and fix those little slip-ups, plus any other mistakes you spotted in terms of rather vapid statements like my one with movies and games. Prolly more along the lines of "Novels have always needed to have an emphasis on story whereas movies and games, originally, could get away with the lack thereof." However, I do think that although critics give games and movies flack for no story, they are still able to gain a lot of monetary returns from audiences and gamers who decide to pick them up. For example, the Gears of War games might have a loose story, but ultimately it is chainsawing aliens in half with the Railgun. In terms of novels, I don't really think any novel that I know of can get away with having zero story. Does it have to be a good story? In the case of Twilight, no, but they at least have a story to speak of. If novels had stories as bare as "Shark Night 3D" or "Bayonetta", I doubt they would do as well.

As for the ambiguity on the military, or on Leftists giving OSC shit for not punishing Ender enough for his innocent accidents, I could make it one of those reviews, but I felt that for a novel review (something I'm not used to), I wanted to try and not really give it an in-depth argument because I wanted readers to find out what happens, and think about those for themselves. With this review, I gave them the building blocks necessary to understand what they may want to look for, but as for what happens at the end with the Buggers or how they should feel about Ender's acts of violence, I want them to decide how they feel so I tried to sell the book without really going philosophical about it .

But thanks for your input, dude! Another GameJams episode is actually going to be in the works soon! Break's almost over!

Update: There is something that I thought about in terms of Leftist thinking that Ender got off too easily - even if nobody gave him that much flack in Ender's Game, as he travels the stars in the subsequent books (star travel takes lifetimes to accomplish, so 3000 years pass between books 1 and 2), historians do what they do best and rewrite history - Ender was a hero after the war ended, but he is known as a monster as time passes and as history is written in different perspectives. This is a good commentary on apologist historians changing history to either bring a previously-known monster into a more positive light, or to paint a former hero into a monstrous new figure.

Also, the rest of the series shows Ender trying to work towards redemption for what he did in the past, thus becoming a Speaker for the Dead and