Title Ender's Game Author Orson Scott Card Cover Art --- Publisher TOR - 1991 First Printing 1985
	Title A War of Gifts Author Orson Scott Card Cover Art --- Publisher TOR - 2007 First Printing TOR - 2007
	Title Speaker for the Dead Author Orson Scott Card Cover Art John Harris Publisher TOR - 1991 First Printing 1986
	Title Xenocide Author Orson Scott Card Cover Art John Harris Publisher Tor - 1992 First Printing Tor - 1991
	Title Children of the Mind Author Orson Scott Card Cover Art --- Publisher Tor - 1997 First Printing Tor - 1996
	Title Ender's Shadow Author Orson Scott Card Cover Art Gordon Crabb Publisher Tor - 2013 First Printing Tor - 1999
	Title Shadow of the Hegemon Author Orson Scott Card Cover Art --- Publisher Tor - 2001 First Printing Tor - 2000
	Title Shadow Puppets Author Orson Scott Card Cover Art Bob Warner Publisher Tor - 2003 First Printing Tor - 2002
	Title Shadow of the Giant Author Orson Scott Card Cover Art Bob Warner Publisher Tor - 2005 First Printing Tor - 2006
	Title Ender in Exile Author Orson Scott Card Cover Art John Harris Publisher Tor - 2013 First Printing Tor - 2008
	Title Shadows in Flight Author Orson Scott Card Cover Art John Harris Publisher Tor - 2013 First Printing Tor - 2011
	Title The Last Shadow Author Orson Scott Card Cover Art John Harris Publisher Tor - 2021 First Printing Tor - 2021
	Title Battle School Author Christopher Yost, Orson Scott Card Illustrator Pasqual Ferry Publisher Marvel - 2009 First Printing Marvel - 2009
	Title Command School Author Christopher Yost, Orson Scott Card Illustrator Pasqual Ferry Publisher Marvel - 2010 First Printing Marvel - 2010
	Title Ender's Shadow: Ultimate Collection Author Mike Carey, Orson Scott Card Illustrator Sebastian Fiumara, Giulia Brusco Publisher Marvel - 2012 First Printing Marvel - 2012
	Title First Meetings in Ender's Universe Author Orson Scott Card Cover Art --- Publisher Tor - 2003 First Printing Tor - 2003
	Title Mazer in Prison Author Orson Scott Card Cover Art Howard Lyon Publisher Intergalactic Medicine Show - 2005 First Printing Intergalactic Medicine Show - 2005
	Title Pretty Boy: The Story of Bonzo Madrid Author Orson Scott Card Cover Art Jin Han Publisher Intergalactic Medicine Show - 2006 First Printing Intergalactic Medicine Show - 2006
	Title Cheater Author Orson Scott Card Cover Art Jin Han Publisher Intergalactic Medicine Show - 2006 First Printing Intergalactic Medicine Show - 2006
	Title A Young Man with Prospects Author Orson Scott Card Cover Art Julie Dillon Publisher Intergalactic Medicine Show - 2007 First Printing Intergalactic Medicine Show - 2007
	Title The Gold Bug Author Orson Scott Card Cover Art Jin Han Publisher Intergalactic Medicine Show - 2007 First Printing Intergalactic Medicine Show - 2007
	Title Ender's Stocking Author Orson Scott Card Cover Art Jin Han Publisher Intergalactic Medicine Show - 2007 First Printing Intergalactic Medicine Show - 2007
	Title Ender's Homecoming Author Orson Scott Card Cover Art --- Publisher Intergalactic Medicine Show - 2008 First Printing Intergalactic Medicine Show - 2008
	Title Ender in Flight Author Orson Scott Card Cover Art --- Publisher Intergalactic Medicine Show - 2008 First Printing Intergalactic Medicine Show - 2008
	Title Gloriously Bright Author Orson Scott Card Cover Art --- Publisher --- First Printing ---
	Title Govenor Wiggin Author Orson Scott Card Cover Art --- Publisher --- First Printing ---
	Title Renegat Author Orson Scott Card Cover Art Julia Lloyd Publisher Titan Books - 2017 First Printing Titan Books - 2017
	Title Messenger Author Orson Scott Card Cover Art Julia Lloyd Publisher Titan Books - 2019 First Printing Uncle Orson on the Fly - 2018
	Category Science Fiction Warnings Abuse Main Characters Andrew Ender Wiggin, Peter, Valentine, Novinha, Mira, Jane, Qing-Jao, Wang-Mu, Bean, Petra, Achilles, Thulium, Sprout Main Elements Aliens Website Hatrack River - The Official Web Site of Orson Scott Card

Ender's Game

A War of Gifts

Speaker for the Dead

Xenocide

Children of the Mind

Ender's Shadow

Shadow of the Hegemon

Shadow Puppets

Shadow of the Giant

Ender in Exile

Shadow in Flight

The Last Shadow

Battle School

Command School

Ender's Shadow: Ultimate Collection

First Meetings in Ender's Universe

I'm doing an SF themed reading year, and I had Ender's Game sitting on my PVR, figured hey, I'll just read the book first, didn't expect much, I mean it had hype, it won awards but I hadn't really heard much about it. I now have a new top 10, maybe top 5 series! I could probably write an entire page review for each book in this series so I'll have to be brief. But I will say this, these books are a must read. They can be brutal and difficult at times, but there is so much heart in them. And they make you think. Dune might be a big epic that presents a lot of thoughts on politics, religion and empires, but these books are about people, and about ethics. And that may be the more challenging topic of the two.

Ender's Game - Oh...wow. Not sure how to put into words what I felt reading this book, it was so emotionally demanding. The government takes this one boy, about 6 years old, and starts to train him as a solider. Not train, brainwash, and at times, yes, downright abuse. They WANT to break him, push him as far as he can go, he's a little too nice you see, but deep down, he can and will fight back. They need that. They need someone who is both nice and ruthless, and the way to get that is to keep knocking him down and seeing if he'll still get back up. It was a brutal read, but it wasn't wanton cruelty either, I mean they weren't whipping, punching or physically abusing him, it was all psychological...and they didn't want to do it, there are little blurbs at the start of the chapters where you see the thoughts of the teachers and how it was hard for them to do this to just a little boy, but they truly believed they had no choice because if Ender couldn't become what they needed then our entire species would be exterminated by an invading alien species. And then end was so shocking when the truth comes out, like a gut punch to the mind. When I was finished reading the book I had to sit and just contemplate what was this thing I was holding in my hands.

A War of Gifts - A short story that takes place during Ender's time in Battle School, a place crammed full of young kids who are desperately homesick and religion and other cultural things are forbidden. But Christmas comes around, and quiet protest centered around the gifting of socks...

Speaker for the Dead - I thought ok, one amazing book, but he can't really do it again can he? I mean there's no war anymore and Ender is just wandering aimlessly around the colonized planets telling true tales of people's lives, of who they were, a speaker for the dead. Till he is summoned to planet, the only other planet other than the one he wiped out, where intelligent alien life exists. Between trying to heal a broken family and save a species, this book had the same emotional punch as the first. One is almost drained when one finishes these books, but this one was more about healing than it was about destroying, but even healed wounds can still leave scars. And history is known to repeat itself.

Xenocide - Continues where Speaker for the Dead leaves off, Ender still struggling to understand and to save the sentient species on the planet of Lusitania, while a girl, suffering from OCD but believing she is being spoken to by the gods, is intent on destroying them. Again I thought, could this be as good as the previous two? For the first hundred pages or so I felt not and then...then I was sucked in all over again. This time the "technobabble" around rewriting viruses, the nature of the ecology on Lusitania, the nature of Jane, and whether faster than light travel is feasible gets a little overwhelming...but oh so enticing to a science fiction fan. This one didn't win an award, but probably because people felt one author shouldn't win for EVERY book he puts out! Because this one was pretty amazing too, it goes so far as to touch on the very nature of god.

Children of the Mind - ok, I started to get a little tired of the angst and everyone being so emotionally damaged. Also its the same storyline that just keeps on going (half the time you forget there's an attack fleet coming) and there are just so many things these characters need to solve all at the same time, each of which is worthy of years of research on their own, but ALL need to be solved NOW, and simultaneously. It was a little much...but eventually the story dragged me back in, I couldn't help it, Card is just too good a writer. And even though many threads are resolved here, there's a new one that opens up, an encounter with yet another sentient, yet dangerous, species. Since the Ender books end here and we switch to the Ender's Shadow spinoff, will see if we ever get back to this.

Question...why do all the book covers show space stations and ships when virtually none of the action takes place off planet (several planets are involved yes, but almost no time is spent at all in space, and none whatsoever was on a space station...)

Ender's Shadow - We return to the beginning and tell the tale of Bean. It starts with how he grows up in the streets, clearly smarter than anyone around him, in fact to a level that is hard to believe, outdoing even Ender by several levels of magnitude. Fortunately there's a reason for that, and one to explain why he is so small, even for his young age. After reading those books with Ender as an adult, it was interesting to go back to Battle School and the kids. I thought the ending might be a bit of a letdown since the reader already knows the "twist" (and while the blurb says you can read this book first, I REALLY recommend reading Ender's Game first, I think it has a bigger punch, and then makes the fact that Bean figures out the twist early, a different kind of heartrenching experience). But no, I was reaching for the Kleenex box yet again. I don't know how Card does it, even when at times I feel I've had enough of these characters (I was never meant to read one a month after all), I'm always drawn back in. You can't help but care about the characters, even one so alien as Bean. I look forward to the next book since up till now we only have vague ideas of what happens next on Earth since Ender takes off to explore the galaxy.

Shadow of the Hegemon / Shadow Puppets / Shadow of the Giant - Lumping these three together as the consist of one continuous substory. What happens when the Battle School students return home, and when Earth is no longer united by an external threat? We'll we do what we do best, we'll go to war amongst ourselves. It was interesting how Card bumped our world into the future, and how things might have shaken up a bit due to an alien threat, but at the same time, the cultures of all our countries wouldn't have completely changed, just the balances of power. The U.S is still the richest, but it no longer takes an interest in world affairs, leaving India, China, Russia and the Muslim world an opportunity to vie for top dog, each fighting in their own way, each making mistakes unique to their cultures/history, while of course being manipulated by Achilles. I'm not sure what I would feel if I were from any of those countries considering how they were depicted. Would readers see it as a bit of charicature? Or would they nod and admit, yep, it would kind of go down that way. Since Canada wasn't even mentioned once the entire time (what, did we get consummed by the US or something?) I don't know how I'd feel. I did get a bit of thrill when he pulled in minor countries, in particular Latvia since my mother's side of the family are from there, and yes, they would be freaking out about Russian making for a grab for them again...in fact, fast forward to 2022 and they are freaking about exactly that right now. Just as countries were joining the Free Peoples in the books, countries like Finland are now joining NATO, to protect themselves from Russian invasion. I guess some things aren't that hard to predict...

It was very refreshing that it wasn't US/Europe centric. However I found these books didn't have the same emotional bang that the other Ender books had. I had to get to Giant before I felt the need for a kleenex. Sure ethical dilemas still existed, but in fact it was mainly political maneuvering which doesn't exactly pull on the heartstrings, only makes for a puzzle to solve without starting WWIII.

And...finally Card's religious side comes out. The whole obsession of Petra, and later with Bean, to "make babies"...suddenly virtually every female wanted to make babies. Sigh. I mean yes, just because I don't have any doesn't mean that a lot of women out there don't want to have families, but it felt like obsession and it got kind of preachy at moments about religion and having children (which at the same time giving I felt a fairly unbiased view of other religions, Islam wasn't depicted as evil, but at the same time, there are fanatics, and the Battle School studen who becomes Caliph has to struggle to deal with all factions of his religion). Remember, these battle school kids are young teens, barely old enough to even have kids!

At least Petra and Bean were distracted by having to help Peter become the Hegemon. That's where the maneuverings were most interesting since Peter didn't have an army, he didn't have any money and he didn't have any authority, yet somehow...we know from the Ender books that he ends up uniting the world. Ironically he could not have done it if it weren't for everyone in the East starting fights and scaring everyone else...

So while I didn't enjoy these Shadow books as much as the others, it was mainly due to the Ender books creating such a high bar to meet. These books are still good, but somehow not as epic in nature, just the regular day-to-day jostling of our modern world with a few people tossed in to mess with the balance.

Ender in Exile - Here we return to Ender, right after the end of the war and before he heads out to space. He need to decide what to do, and once decided, he needs to prove that a little 16-year-old kid can handle being a govenor of a new interstellar colony. I enjoyed watching him, well, manipulate the ship's captain, an admiral that doesn't like the idea that Ender actually outranks him. The "everyone needs to make babies otherwise their lives are worthless" message pops up here too, which is kind of ironic seeing that we know from earlier books that Ender never has children. But that aside, I once again needed to pull out the kleenex box. There is something about dealing with wiping out an entire species that ultimately let you do it to them. How does one live with that, what can you do to atone. Note that while this book starts off before most of the Bean/Shadow books, because of relativistic space travel, it joins up where the Shadow books end, you need to read the Shadow books first (although where the two intersect, it was a little less than satisfying, it got resolved pretty quick).

Shadows in Flight - Ugh, what a set of brats! I mean I get they aren't a normal batch of kids, nor are they having a normal upbringing stuck on a spaceship with only each other and a father who can't leave the cargo bay since he's grown so large, so their social skills are understandably lacking. But you'd think super smart people would figure out that being nice to each other will make living with each other a little more pleasant? Well, Card certainly likes making challenging characters! And if you thought reading about four people trapped on an FTL spaceship their whole lives could get a little boring, it really doesn't Card continues to surprise me, and we get to learn a bit more about the Formics, it made them a little more...human.

The Last Shadow - I was lucky enough to, by complete chance, avoid starting this series before this book was published, so I didn't have to wait a decade to find out how it ended! Because in one storyline, Ender's group thinks they might have found the source of the deadly virus, while on the other end, Bean's children have solved their genetic problems, but getting all these great minds together to solve the virus problem seems ideal, so in pops Jane (literally!). Bean's grandkids aren't much better than his children, though I particularly liked Sprout (and no surprise, Sargeant's children are so problematic they had to be left on the ship). But wow...let's just say what is found on the Descolada planet is NOT in a million years, what I ever would have guessed would be on that planet. Not entirely sure I'm completely convinced what happened there could actually have come about the way he explained it, but it was kind of cool, and absolutely unpredictable. But, since Card tries hard to represent the real world, sometimes plotlines don't go the way the reader expects them to, not everything gets tied up with a bow, and I liked that. The only issue is...there was one idea, one where maybe the Hive Queen has more in mind than living happily ever after alongside various alien species that was never followed up on (I can't quite recall now if it was in Shadows in Flight, or in the short story Messenger), and that seemed like a HUGE unresolved thread (and threat), that little bit of niggling doubt.

The Short Stories

Most of these can be found on the Intergalactic Medicine Show magazine site, or Orson Scott Card's official website, except for a handful that were published in either magazines or anthologies. First Meetings was available on Open Library so I was still able to read that for free, while the last two I bought the anthologies.

First Meetings - We start with a tale about Ender's father, The Polish Boy, a bright boy born in Poland, but a sixth child when only two were allowed and how he manipulated the I.F. to get his family to Ameria. The second tale, The Teacher's Pest, is Ender's father, older and in universtiy now, grumpy that the computer system assigned him to this class when he discovers the graduate student is at least as smart as him if not more so, and pretty as well. I liked these two since the parents kind of got overshadowed by their kids and these tales explain why. The third tale is the original Ender's Game, when it was just a short story published in Analog magazine, it's very close to what the novel came out to be, but Anderson and Graff seem reversed, and Bean didn't outthink the system but the novel was definitely better, a lot more room to explain things (if I didn't already know what an ansible was I wouldn't have understood the explanation, same the the Little Doctor weapon which didn't yet even have a name). Finally, in The Investment Counselor Ender meets Jane for the first time, as she appears to him as a help A.I. program that will help him calculate 400 hundred years of investments and taxes...I dunno, I would NEVER click on a popup ad and install the software, guess Ender's world doesn't live in fear of computer viruses? Not that Ender really had a choice with Jane, whether or not he agreed to the terms and services...

Mazer in Prison - We get a little back story on a very grumpy character, enjoyed this one, especially since Graff makes his first appearance too.

Pretty Boy - We see Bonzo's childhood and some of what he experienced as a child explained why he was such a jerk in Battle School...and yet not, as he made a decent decision in the end, not a self-centered one, so I didn't feel it explained how he turned out. And not sure why he's lying down on the floor in the related artwork.

Cheater - We focus on Han Tzu (Hot Soup) in this story, guess he really was destined to be the leader of China, or at least his father seemed to think so. I'll leave you to read it to find out why it's called Cheater.

A Young Man with Prospects - This was just a chapter from Ender in Exile, where Alessandra finds out why her mother is a little nutty and is convinced they should go to the colonies.

The Gold Bug - Again, a chapter from Ender in Exile where Sel Menach and Po discover the gold bugs on the Formic world they have colonized.

Ender's Stocking - While the title says Ender, it's really about Peter, but then that's maybe at the core of this tale, since everything is about Ender when Peter wants it to be him. This is the key moment when Peter goes from being an obvious psychopath, to hiding his true nature, which will eventually allow him to become the Hegemon. Here's a boy that flays squirrels alive, but is also hurt when people say they don't like him. It's kind of terrifying actually, but maybe the world needs leaders like this, that not just want power, but want to build something that truly last. They need to be egomaniacs, but also have this ability to look to the future and realize that they can't use force to build a lasting empire, they need to do something that will make people want this empire to continue, so the people need to benefit from it too. So he can be a good guy while being a villain. Very tricky!

Ender's Homecoming - I'm fascinated how this super intelligent family can also be completely oblivious to each other, and how they go about keeping up facades and manipulating each other. This is a chapter from Ender in Exile.

Ender in Flight - Another Ender in Exile chapter, with him up against the ship's Admiral and he just a little boy who is to become governor of an entire colony.

Renegat - While Ender is the Speaker of the Dead, he travels to a world not just to speak but to unravel a mystery, one revolving around some native fauna that may be more intelligent than they appear, and makes the reader re-evaluate what a sentient species actually is (in fact I couldn't help comparing it to Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep, though it isn't quite the same)

Messenger - (Takes place between Shadows in Flight and The Last Shadow) Graff is yanked out of stasis by Jane, and transported light years to convince Bean's children that they need to help solve the Descolada problem. I was kind of happy to see Graff getting this story, he was no genius but he had a dream he was willing to fight for and he knew exactly how to manipulate people and thus exactly the right person to convince the three siblings that maybe the rest of humanity stills matters and that they aren't so different from the rest of us as they might like to think, one mutated gene does not an entire species create, otherwise albinos, dwarfs and other mutation would be different "species".

IN GENERAL - I love the blurbs at the start of the chapters, where we see the point of view of outside observers watching the events going on. Oh, they are totally biased observers and play their own roles in the stories, but it is almost a kind of behind the scenes thing and gives insight into these other characters whose point of views we never otherwise get to see as narrators. I almost enjoyed them more than the actual stories, so that's saying a lot.

Card also delves into various cultures. Lusitana is a Catholic colony in a mainly atheist empire, populated by Portuguese speaking Brazilians. The planet Path is Chinese Taoist. Ender himself is a child of a world that had tried to wipe out religion and differences between the peoples of overpopulated Earth. The children in Battle School come from all the countries of the world. And the alien cultures are examined in depth as well.

And it goes in depth into misunderstandings, jumping to conclusions, and assuming that if one is different, they must be hostile, the importance of learning to communicate. This doesn't just apply to the aliens of course.

And just a little nerdy "Squee!" moment. In Ender's Game was this quote, "The official name is Philotic Parallax Instantaneous Communicator, but someone dredged the name ansible out of an old book somewhere and it caught on" *cough* I've read that "old book" *cough*. The only thing that would make this more cool is if we ever manage to create a working version of Ursula Le Guin's invention.

Discovered there are graphic novels of the books, and the library had to two Ender ones...though I had to read them in French, ah well. The art was pretty good though sometimes an eye or an ear would be faded out or blurred over and it make it look like the character was missing an eye which was kind of creepy. Also...poor Graff, that uniform was NOT flattering, it wouldn't have looked good on anyone really but Graff is a little on the chubby side. But as usual, it is always interesting to revisit the first book, you catch things you missed before, and interesting to see everything illustrated (for example I didn't picture Ender blond though I assume he probably was in the book?).