7 Books
See allThis book is garbage. There is no plot it is more or less, the kid goes to school then just several pages of psychological torture porn. Ender just keeps leveling up it is not compelling in the least. It is like watching someone learn how to play the harmonica. All the characters are unlikable and only then ender siblings have a character, everyone else is just a good person or a bad person. No one ever changes throughout the book they are all just Gary Sues who are instantly gifted at the start of the book they either don't have problems or constantly have problems and never find a solution to it so it and run away at the end. The characters just get whisked around by the plot ender just suffers torture until they don't care about him anymore. Valentine just keeps following peter's directions until he controls the world and doesn't need her anymore. The only act of agency render gets is murdering a child which he solves as soon as it comes up and even that is a plan by graff. Ender just gets whisked around by the plot with no agency till people don't care about him anymore.
The twist at the end just seems like being a twist for the sake of being a twist. Nothing changes it just serves as more torture porn. If the book had made us believe in the cause it might have been surprising but everyone in power is a dick so when you find ou you are just like yeah sure they are dicks to their soldiers why wouldn't the war be pointless. Ender never especially believed in the cause, his motivation was just to excel through battle school so it has no bearing on the plot. The story is written like garbage, his prose is bland and uninteresting and the story is supposed to be about how ender's compassion is what truly makes him special. I will quote from spark notes “Compassion is the theme that runs through Ender's life. It is the defining feature of his existence. The reason that he plays the games so well is his ability to understand the enemy and to inspire loyalty. More than that, it is compassion that saves Ender”
Ender brutally murders two of his classmates. And his brother who is legit ender but psychopath does great, he ends up ruling the world, so clearly not having compassion wasn't that big a roadblock. Your themes clash with each other compassion and ruthlessness ARE OPPOSING THEMES. Also, peter rules the world through the power of blogging which is the stupidest thing I have ever heard.
Orson also rambles on about the kids being naked which makes me wonder if he is a priest. In the book, the ender is just good at stuff. It is the whole chosen one BS but the chosen one doesn't do anything except be awesome and sad. His intellect will solve stuff, no need for work or passages discussing how he comes across these things, just bask in this power fantasy.
Also, the author is a huge homophobe but as far as I know, he doesn't get that till later books so it isn't very prevalent in this book.
This was a terrible book. The summary and back were totally misleading. They said the book would be about a few girls fighting in a revolution however the entire book the girls react to the fighting of the revolution. the entire book is them being scared because they joined the revolution or deciding whether or not they should join the revolution. The book is also very hard to get through and even when you do the story is so bad you'll wish you hadn't. I hate everything about this book.
God this book sucks. I heard so many good things about it and Neil Gaiman and so decided to read it. No matter how mind-numbingly boring it got I held on trying to finish the book because so many people liked it. But no, the story is about as dull as it can get Our main character is a nothing character. You can't even say he's a flat character, he is a block of wood with the ability to be where the important stuff happens. He gives no shits about anything. He's not an interesting character on the inside or out. He works for literal gods and his reaction is nothing more than the barest an acknowledgment that it is happening. His reaction is akin to finding out your fish is a different species than you thought. Sure, that's nice to know but who really cares. I'm not asking for an emotional breakdown just be interested, ask a few questions at the very least. And there is nothing interesting about the gods. the point of the story is that the gods from all the mythologies exist. Wow, that's cool, how does this affect the world in any significant way. Can we look forward to something interesting about them like lives that are even the slightest bit different from your average human? NO. They are all just depressed people. Odin is basically just a scam artist. Nothing else not even incorporating the mythology, like making him need to know stuff which was an important part of him in Norse culture. No, just some scam artist dude. The book has nothing compelling about it. The main character does not want anything. Even finding out his wife cheated on him elicits like a, I felt bad for a bit, then it was immediately cleared up, wow so much for that subplot. The gods are unlikeable to with Odin robbing people but not in a fun anti-hero way and sleeps with underage women. Then the twist at the end is treated like a big surprise. Nothing even happens for half the book.-Shadow gets hired, Loki is recruited, Shadow is kidnapped and ends up in a frozen wasteland which he easily escapes. Also, the story makes no sense. Odin and Kali and Loki are all gods of things like violence wisdom and trickery. There is no reason they should be weak because people still are violent, tricky and smart. Sure they aren't worshiped but neither is TV, people just use it a lot so they shouldn't be weak. There would just be more gods. Thereby making the entire story pointless