LitPick Review
Intergalactic drama meets juvenile angst in Orson Scott
Card's "Ender in Exile." A boy named Ender ensconces the
plot. In the future, this boy is conscripted into the
military at the age of six. In his preteen years, he
capriciously hits a button and fires a missile at the
enemy; he is afterward deemed a war hero. One side of the
galaxy sees him as this ominously powerful man, while the
other side of the galaxy views him as a boy-puppet with an
insatiable appetite for blood. Melancholy spelunks deep
within the cave of the reader when they realize that a boy
has been robbed of his innocence very early in life,
catapulted into a world of violence and despair that he
does not [and may never quite] fully understand. Further
thrills ensue when the boy's parent yearn for his return
home and his siblings follow in Ender's footsteps by
anonymously documenting his history. Science fiction is
in the book, with mystical creatures and the notion of
time with regards to relativity. Also, most mentions of
war relate to Russia, although no notion of world war two
or the cold war are redundantly regurgitated. The story
centers around the boy's internal struggle and is mostly
respectful when it comes to discussing present nations in
the future.
Opinion:
<p>Young adults will grow from reading this
book. There is just enough vocabulary to make readers
little semanticists, but there is not so much that they
get frustrated and want to put the book down. The
narration sticks mostly to first person, although it
intermittently changes perspective every couple of
chapters. The emails at the start of the chapters make
the scenes modern and dependent on computers (as most
young readers tend to naturally depict the future).
Additionally, there is some romance spun into the plot
when Ender meets a girl named Alex. Alex's mother cajoles
her into chasing after Ender in hopes of matrimony. Ender
toys with Alex's emotions, too young to truly know what
love is. There is much drama when Alex confronts her
mother, as well as when Ender finally communicates his
woes with his abandoned family. The book can best be
summed up by one quote towards the end of the
novel. "Surround a child with lies, and he clings to them
like a teddy bear, like his mother's hand. And the worse,
the darker the lie, the more deeply he has to draw it
inside himself in order to bear the lie at all" (Card,
360).
