Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

If you have ever been bullied for being good at school work or your job, or for being interested in how things work, and if you have ever felt lonely as a result, then this book may well speak to you.

In an unspecified future where personal surveillance has been taken to a new level and a shadowy military intelligence organisation is busy pulling political strings, Ender (as Andrew Wiggin calls himself) is a talented six year-old child from a talented family.  The youngest of three, he is bullied by his sadist brother and nurtured and protected by his loving sister.  After a violent altercation with a schoolyard bully, Ender is conscripted into a military academy for gifted children.  There he and his new colleagues undergo specialised training to prepare them to combat an anticipated third mass invasion of Earth by an aggressive alien species.

The book follows Ender's progress through his years of training, mapping how he responds to the challenges that are set for him or thrust upon him.  In the meantime, Ender's siblings hatch a plan to capture the hearts and minds of the citizens of The Hegemony, a geo-political bloc, in order to change the future of humanity for the better.  Or are they?

In Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card has produced a tale that examines the uses of talent by society and the nature of bullying and of power.  Not that he delves deeply into any of these subjects, but they do form the matrix on which the story is woven.  In the background is the unspoken question: do the ends justify the means?  Although there is a degree of ambivalence in the book regarding this question, it does set the ground for the final chapter and (one presumes) for the sequel, The Speaker for the Dead.

Card tell his story in the straightforward style of an action thriller.  Yes, there is plenty of action interspersed between lengthy passages of dialogues and soliloquies. Or is that the other way about?  Perhaps a drawback of the tale is the eloquence and honed sensibilities of Ender and his cohorts.  It is hard to believe that sub-teens think and talk in the way they do in this book.  Well, this is the future: maybe they do things differently there.

Overall, Ender's Game is a solid effort.  Although I had expected more from it, I do look forward to reading the sequel.  And you have to admire someone who invents a simile like: 'I am about as useful as a sneeze in a spacesuit.'

Ender's Game won both the Hugo and Nebula awards for 1985.  I read the Hachette Digital ebook edition.