"The enemy's gate is down!"

Hi all;

I'm sorry girls (and guys), I'm not sure if I can make book club this Thursday because of my mom & Flora's imminent return from their month of Asia vacation. So, I thought I'd contribute my 2-cents and sing my praises for Ender's Game here =)

Ender's Game is the only Sci-Fi that managed to wakes me up at 6:00am Sunday by the necessity of reading. It helps that the story is an extremely fast & easy read and that the futuristic gadgets are all so cool (I'd like one of those desks and mind games, please). Most of all, though, I like it because it doesn't read like a Sci-Fi -- but simply a story of a young - very young - boy who desperately tries to fit. Now that I think about it, other than the Sci-Fi part, Ender's Game reads a lot like Harry Potter =)

Throughout the story, Ender repeatedly comments that he's becoming Peter (e.g. looking into a mirror in the free game and see Peter's face), but at the end, he wasn't manipulative or feared. In fact, he had to be tricked into battling the buggers, and felt remorse for his sacrificed soldiers & the bugger world when he found out. It reminds me of what Dumbledore said to Potter near the end of Chamber of Secret: "It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities."

The idea of "Third" in the first chapter instantly reminds me of population control in China – our book club is just naturally attracted to communist stories, aren’t we? =) Speaking of Communism backdrops, what do you think of Graff? "Individual human beings are all tools, that the others use to help us all survive." The ideas of "monitoring" children from birth, plucking them from their home to battle school, monitoring their every move & thoughts -- where's the Big brother to complete the picture? =)

Being so satisfied with the book, I did a little googling and found the whole lot of prequels and sequels -- and am quite determined to not read any of them unless one of you suggests otherwise. I also found that OS Card is a devoted Mormon, who'd know? Such a great Sci-Fi, I'd have guessed that a Scientologist wrote it!