Book review: Ender's game

By Orson Scott Card. I regret re-reading this. Goodreads will tell you some of the bad points,as well as having lots of people enthuse over it.

The implausibly young children achieving implausible things is not especially plausible; one could perhaps try making them older, to little effect. Despite the violence, the book is somewhat bland and unsatisfying, though still quite page-turney.

Do we believe (warning: spoilers) that the adults would have failed to realise that the buggers were not fighting back once the queen died? I think not. Indeed, given the storyline, is an alien "fleet" even believeable?

The finale is based on video games, and makes a nice plot twist. But, why would within-a-solar-system orbital mechanics lead to a game taking about an hour? Days would seem more likely... although the drive systems are never mentioned. And if your aim is to get to the planet, why deccelerate at all?

Re-reading my review, I find I'm too negative. I can still - faintly - recall how well this read the first time I read the book, perhaps in my 20's. The problems are that it doesn't re-read well; and perhaps because I've since read far too many young-kids-being-implausibly-adult books.