Geez the movie was almost completely different from the book!! It was kind of hard to imagine they're even related, and don't get me started on the end! What was with that!? It was nothing like the book! How is Ender's brother going to take over he world? How does Valentine have such a big impact on what happens? All of it was just missing.
So yeah, these aren't even all the differences I noted while watching, jut the ones I can recall now. It has to me never been this obvious the difference between a book and movie before. I don't know how anyone who watched the movie knew what on earth was happening or why because they skipped out on so much information and scenes.
End thought: Movie was shit.
Heads up - this review is all over the place, mainly I just wrote down whatever came to mind and didn't bother putting it into a more coherent order....
A rather strange book, but I enjoyed listening to it for the most part. It was a nice distraction while I was cooking, catching the bus, doing chores, etc.
I do want to point out these odd kissing and naked scene's - what was with those? mainly the naked fighting scene, that just seemed particularly bizarre. Freudian slip perhaps? Or perhaps it was just meant to be innocent boys fighting in the nude and it just came across a little weird via the audio version?
One of the best things about this book was it's surprises and slow build. You have an idea something was going to happen but no clue when, where or how - it was fun, though I didn't bother trying to guess like I usually would, just enjoyed the ride.
The characters were a bit....meh. One could say it's because the author didn't put enough effort into creating and building them, only using them as chess pieces as needed, or someone else could say that the reason they came off so bland was because Ender could never truly get close to anyone enough for us to truly get a read on them, and therefor they came off a distant and maybe more 2 dimensional.... me being the cynical bitch that I am favor the first opinion more. Though I did love the fact there was no love interest!
I have mixed feelings about the narration - some of it was good, other times a bit iffy.
The ending was enjoyable and satisfying. And i especially enjoyed the authors little speech at the end. He's pretty funny, maybe a little up himself (hard to tell when your only listening to an audio tape) but I had a good laugh at a lot of what he had to say.
Apparently there's a movie - after listening to the author explain how he....changed it, I must admit to be rather interested in watching it. Here's hoping its good!
Not sure I'll read the other books attached to Ender's Game though they did sound interesting - we'll see.
9% - I listen to this now and then, usually while I'm cooking dinner or going for a walk. It's a tad....strange, but the narrator does a pretty good job with the different voices, especially the adult voices... mixed feelings about the voices for the children. Though the speech pattern is fantastic - something i miss out on when I'm actually reading.
25% - Taking me a while to get through it all, but I'm enjoying it while doing my chores, etc.
This is one of those books that I'd heard so much about in the last few years, that it was kind of impossible not to read it at some point. Also, I watched the movie and although I saw the twist coming for quite some time, I really enjoyed it.
Basically Ender's Game bottles down to Ender, a young boy (at the start he's supposed to be 6 years old - something I'm just not buying), sent of to train at Battle School to learn to fight a war against some kind of creatures.
A lot has been said about this book, the series and the author. Therefore, this is not an in depth review but rather just some of the ideas I had when reading the book. The beginning really intrigued me and I thought I'd finish it within a day, since it was so compelling. However, after one particularly unnecessary sexist comment (stating women have evolution working against them) I kind of lost interest for some time.
This might also have to do something with the fact that Ender (who's only 6 years old; did I mention that?) is such a 'fantastic boy wonder genius' (no that's no sarcasm there, of course not, I wouldn't dare, he's really that good, oh and only 6(!) years old). I've always have a problem with these superduper protagonists who apparently can't do anything wrong and seem to shit rainbows and unicorns. Ender is one of those protagonists.
The fact that he has certain anger management issues and a questionable moral when it comes to dealing with bullies is completely glanced over because he's such a good commander.
His siblings are planning to take over the world in a rather dull scheme, but the bright side is that it's the only break from the quite repetitive scenes of Battle School we get. I quite liked the computer game thing, except of course for the fact that special snowflake Ender was the only person smart enough to crack it. The armies and the strategy planning and the battles, they started to feel a bit repetitive as we follow Ender through his years on the school.
This all being said, I really wonder why ever I gave this book 3.5 stars. I always score books immediately after reading and just follow my gut feelings. Perhaps it was the holiday feelings that lingered, or perhaps it's the fact that despite I believe that this book is far from perfect I did have an enjoyable time reading it (I also liked watching the movie) and I would like to at least read the second book, Speaker for the dead.