I’ve just finished Ender’s game.

I had heard that this was possibly the best book ever written, so I had high expectations for this.

After having read it (rather listened, but I’ll come to that later), I don’t know if it’s the best book ever written, but it’s pretty darn good!

I have said before that I rarely read SF : I often find that SF is hard to read for me, because it’s usually heavy stuff (what I call thinky stuff) and I don’t like to ask myself a lot of questions while reading. I love to watch SF, but read it? Nope.

You could ask yourself why I read it if it’s not the usual genre that I like to read. My first answer here would be that since it’s supposed to be one of the best books, that’s definitely something that I want to experience for myself, as a writer. Call it broadening my experience if you will. The second answer is that I looked at the book’s amazon page and I liked the idea of a genius boy school for fleet admirals. That’s more like the usual way to choose a book, you might say.

So, I tried to download this book on my kindle. As you already know, that didn’t work that well. (note for Amazon or MacMillan people : when are you going to settle on rights on e-books? I’m ready to pay the hardback price for the e-book; I only chose e-books to be able to read more easily. So, work things out between the two of you and sell me the damn books!). As my audible credit was up, I decided that I needed to try out a real book to listen to. I had enjoyed listening to S. King’s “on writing” audio version, but I didn’t know if listening to a real novel would work for me or not. I had originally planned to save that credit for J. Campbell’s “hero with a thousand faces”, but audible seems to have pulled it out (note to audible.com’s people : I’d like that book back if possible; Amazon still has a link to your version, but that link is dead). So, I thought that Ender’s game would be a nice book to try in an audio version.

I started to listened to that book while in the TGV to Lille, last friday. I became so engrossed with the story that I decided to go to lunch alone and listen to it while eating. One week later and a few lunchs since last friday passed eating a sandwich while listening, I finished it. So, yes, it’s pretty good.

I found that listening was easy, even in crowded or noisy areas and that the actors performances were excellent. I think that at one point, I could not have felt what I felt, had I been reading instead of listening. At this point in the book (maybe one third), I had had only the protagonist’s viewpoint, with some conversations between two adults in between. It’s at that point that I heard a female voice. The next viewpoint was Ender’s sister. I don’t think I would have thought twice over that had I been reading, but while listening, this had a huge impact on me.

What I particularly liked about that book was how Card manages to make you feel for the little guy. You cheer him up, want to comfort him when he’s sad, you understand why he’s down, all that sort of things.

I heard some light remarks about the way Card depicts children, making them little adults. I didn’t feel that at all. I found that all along the way, Ender’s reaction and his comrades’ were very believable, given all they have been through and who they are. In a way, having those kids believe they were playing harmless games felt very child-like to me and dead in character.

For the fact that the game really isn’t a game, I was not fooled by the author (I didn’t believe that Ender had five years to train and the ancible part made it probable that they could launch an attack from their cozy asteroid), but I don’t think Card had planned to fool me. The fact that the climax here is not the end of the book supports this.

As for the ending, I understand completely Ender’s feelings : he sees himself as having performed genocide and has a choice between correcting that and betraying humans. A tough choice, yet I’m sure that he will choose the path where he can live with himself.

So, to sum it up : great book!

My only problem is that I have to wait 2 weeks before my next audible credit : will I be able to wait that long before downloading “Speaker for the dead”? Doubtful.