I thought a lot about Harry Potter as I read this book. Potter is fantasy and Ender is science fiction but both books belong to another genre as well, that of the boarding school novel.
Ender's Game is so compact and entertaining in part because it compresses what usually takes the protagonists of this type of story many (in Potter's case seven) volumes to complete into one book. (I haven't read the rest of the 'Ender Saga' but assume that the boarding school structure is set aside, at least for Ender himself.)
Little six year old Ender, Andrew Wiggans, is sent off to Battle School, basically orphaning him from his parents (who are glad to rid themselves of the socially frowned upon third child) and his older brother and sister, Peter and Valentine. Both of the older children have been passed over for what boils down to "the chosen one", the future leader of human forces against the evil Buggers who threaten human existence. Peter was rejected for being an unfeeling sociopath, while Valentine is seen as too empathetic (soft). The hope, just like those beds in the three bears house, is that Ender will be 'just right', the perfect mix of empath and killing machine.
Card tells a pretty tight story when tell the story from Ender's POV and he is good at portraying both his thought and feelings. There is a lot of three dimension strategy in the book and there wasn't a moment where I was confused by how Card laid things out, which is a compliment since I'm a pretty 2-D/1-D kind of guy. The first scene is not from Ender's point of view but instead is recordings of his 'teachers' conversation -- all court accessible I'm guessing. This is a nice break from the usual boarding school novel where the teachers motives and strategies are hinted at but not usually revealed until the end of the novel. In this case the circumstances are a little more complicated (imminent alien doom) and the goal a little different (we need a effective killing machine!)
I found the sections which break away to Ender's sister's, Valentine, point of view a bit deflating in comparison. It felt like it broke the unity of place that comes in a school novel. I can see why Card wanted to get this information and dynamic in the story but I just felt it subtracted from the overall thrust. (I believe in the original short story (which I haven't read) Valentine and Peter and this whole subplot wasn't there. While it wides the novel's scope and sets things up for the next book I just don't feel it structurally fits.) But Card does keep the Valentine intrusions to a minimum and when I got to the end of the novel I can see why it was necessary, at least.
So Ender is getting trained up to fight the evil aliens, while Harry Potter is sent to wizard school to get ready to fight Voldemort. But due to the design of the school and the aims of the teachers, Ender is purposely isolated, prevented from making friends. He is taught that the teachers will never intervene to save him. He is in a Darwinian battle where only the strong survive and they survive by any means necessary. Contrast that with Hogwarts where Potter almost immediately gains three good friends and almost all the teachers are taken on as parental figures. Thank goodness for Snape or there wouldn't be any drama! Right from the very first scene in the school yard Card shows a much harder, grim, less forgiving world where force has to be answered by force, and preferably overwhelming or else the other guy will just come back and do you in later.
There is a fairly questionable Social Darwinian thread through
Ender's Game. Ender is bred to be the next Alexander the Great or Napoleon. There is a comment early on that there aren't many girls in Combat School, because millions of years of evolution have selected boys as the best commanders. (One of the annoying things about Valentine is that Card writes her wimpy. As if someone as smart and resourceful as her, who has survived (and to a degree managed) her sociopathic brother wasn't actually pretty fucking tough.) Perhaps some of this is questioned later on in the series. A lot of this leads back to common complaint I have with some science fiction which is that many books like to imagine extreme situations where all human behavior is reduced to a social Darwinian zero sum game which seems to fit with a lot of right-wing thinking. Perhaps I'm just a pinko-red communist Canadian who loves his health-care, but these type of scenarios don't seem to capture the whole picture.
I found the ending of the book was okay. (Mild vague spoilers here on.) Just looking at where I was in the book, how much space was left, gave me enough hints to guess what was going to happen. It felt rather anti-climactic. (To be honest the twist felt like a moral cheat. Were the adults who manipulated and abused Ender all the way through the novel afraid to commit the ultimate crime of genocide? Does it excuse them or Ender from having committed the act? Having a child pull the trigger at the end really paints a picture of a very, very sick culture. And perhaps that is the point.) The long post-script was as much about the book to come as it was about this novel. Though I did enjoy the part about the Buggers, which transformed them from 'evil aliens' to something more complicated. While I don't imagine I agree with Card about much, he is able to raise, and thankfully not answer, quite a few intriguing questions here, about power, morality and how we bridge the gap between the individual and society.
