♂ His and ♀ Her Reviews

Seeing how Ender handled himself whenever thought, they had stopped watching
him, Gaff comes to offer Ender a spot in the program of the fleet. Ender has a
heavy decision for a 6 year old to make. He could stay and remain the third born,
or he could go leaving his sister Valentine, one of the few he loves. He makes the
hard decisions and decides to go into the program.

From the start, things are rough for Ender. He is one of the smallest launchies and
the commander starts out by singling him out. Bernard, a bully of a kid, starts
picking on him, so Ender does what he knows to do and that is defend himself.
Which leaves Bernard with a broken arm and the others fear him.

Immediately Ender stays isolated, because his mind makes him wonder and try
things the others aren’t. But everything he tries is the right thing, he is spending
the time trying to fully understand the environment around him. He spends several
years here getting to know the kids working around him, he keeps moving up faster
than all the others. He does start understanding how they are manipulating him.

While this is going on, Peter and Valentine, Enders brother and sister, have started
on-line persona’s who are gaining alot of respect in intelligent communities. Peter
is out for power, and Valentine knows it, but for some reason a part of her keeps
helping him.

Ender moves up to Commander school and excels in it as he has done before. He
thinks he is doing nothing more than school. Than one day he is told, “This is your
graduation test.” So he tries his best to win so he can be through with all of this.
He wins and then finds out that the whole time he thought he was in school, he
was really commanding the entire fleet attacking the buggers home land.

Ender had done it. Helped lead the Fleet to victory in a war against the buggers.
The whole time through his “schooling” though he was having alot of conflicting
emotions about him being a killer. So when he finds out that while he thought he
was learning and practicing he was really killing the buggers, he gets torn up inside
about it. Than at the end of the book, he is living on the buggers old home planet,
with Valentine, and finds a mother buggers cocoon. So he sees this as being his
way or repaying this species of buggers who only communicate through thought, as
they are speaking to him now.