Book Review: Ender's World by Orson Scott Card

Ender's World: Fresh Perspectives on the SF Classic Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

Ender’s World is a collection of essays on Orson Scott Card’s classic, Ender's Game , which also features Q&As with fans, answered by Card himself. The introduction is written by Card and over those pages, he carefully analyzes and explains what the story of Ender’s Game and the character of Ender Wiggins mean and mean to him. He notes that none of this was in his head when he first wrote the short story decades ago. He just wrote what felt right, but as time passed and the book rose to its well-earned critical acclaim, his introduction shows just how much he cares for the character and the world he created. The collected works in this book identify people who have come to care for Ender and his Game as well, but for differing reasons. The variance in authors, from military strategist to TV show creator and more, indicates that Ender’s Game is a book that transcends the realm of science fiction and speaks to people of all walks of life.

My favourite essay was the first, “How It Should Have Ended,” where Eric James Stone laments that Ender’s story went on beyond his victory against the buggers to reveal a deeply depressed Ender who sought atonement in the sequels. In Stone’s first reading, he determined, like many, that the hero’s story should end with the victory parade. But when he read the book the second time and attempted to stop where he felt it should have ended, he realized he couldn’t. Because he realized that this story wasn’t just about a kid beating the odds stacked against him to create an elite team of soldiers, tricked into defeating a deadly enemy by willingly, but unwittingly sacrificing human lives – it’s a story about Ender Wiggins. A hero. A soldier. A child.

This is a theme that played strongly for me with Ender’s Game and its sequel, Speaker for the Dead because of my appreciation for Joseph Campbell’s The Hero With a Thousand Faces . I’m the person who forces herself to sit through the "Return to the Shire" at the end of Return of the King and loves Peter Jackson for including it even though, yes, it was pretty boring. But I will argue tooth and nail that it was necessary to show the path of the hero. There is no true victory celebration for a hero because the battle for him or her is always a Pyrrhic one. They might save their home and the people they love, but they sacrifice their souls to do so, leaving them no home to return to.

This is even more tragic for Ender because he is a child. He not only loses his home, but his childhood.

"The greatest horror of war is the fateful
transformation of our children into heroes."

The Outer Limits

Before I turn this into my own essay about what Ender’s Game means to me, let me simply recommend this book to any fan of the Ender saga. You may not enjoy or agree with all the points expressed, but hopefully you'll appreciate just how deeply this story has reached for some and why.

With the movie coming out soon, it becomes that much more relevant and gives me high hopes for how true to the book the film will be. It is clear from his introduction that Ender is Card’s baby and he wouldn’t allow his beloved on to the big screen without his supervision and the utmost care and dedication from those to whom he hands Ender over to.

With thanks to NetGalley for providing the opportunity to read and review this book.

4 of 5 stars

Book Review: World War Z by Max Brooks

World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks

The thing that sets this zombie story apart from the others I've experienced is right there in the title: WORLD War Z. So many other zombie stories are America-centric and work on the vague notion that the epidemic is occurring elsewhere in the world, but there is no interaction with anyone but the small pocket of main characters within the United States. Isolation is a huge part of those stories, which ups the tension and emotion, but it always bothers me that a global apocalypse seems to immediately reduce the world to a handful of people right from the start.

In this case, it starts with a handful of people in China, a small village identified as ground zero, the source of the epidemic, then moves throughout the world as the author interviews various survivors of the horrific events. Brooks has already compiled enough information for an official report on the events, but because of all the information he learned doing so, he is compelled to write a more human report. This is another difference about the book that appeals to me: few of the survivor stories are coming from the "regular" people. A lot of the stories come from people responsible for some of the major decisions and events that took place in the war. It is interesting to note how many interviews take place within various types of institutions, or comment on the breakdowns of the people in power after they are forced to make decisions that amount to the sacrifice of thousands of innocent human lives to contain and ultimately destroy the undead.

The nature of the recounts does not allow for a lot of emotional attachment to any of the characters and the emotions of the characters themselves has to be extrapolated by the reader based on the stories they tell. Ironically, my favourite story was the one of Paul Redeker. An apparently emotionless man who turned the tides of the epidemic in Africa through the implementation of a controversial plan.

I also really liked that this wasn't just about fighting the zombies. It was a surprisingly in depth look at the various government and military institutions around the world. Their reactions to the event are very realistic and remained so throughout. And in the end, no one country could claim any kind of victory. There is also a lot of emphasis on the guilt that comes with "just following orders."

Because the book occurs after the events, there is no sense of immediate danger. This might not work for some readers, and evidently, it doesn't work for the upcoming movie, which clearly pits Brad Pitt against the zombies. I also notice that the zombies are more like freaky carpenter ants in the trailer, speedily climbing over each other to swarm their targets. There is a small moment in the book that describes the zombies as a "swarm," which I suspect is what inspired the movie interpretation of their movement habits, but otherwise, the book maintains the shambling corpse that is zombie flick standard.

My book club is reading this book because of the upcoming movie. We're curious to see how far it strays from the source material, as the trailer already seems to depict. I'll check back later with my report!

4 of 5 stars