So I’ve started listening to the Ender’s Game audiobook, a novel I’ve been wanting to read for a very long time but just never got around to. It’s supposedly a “classic” as far as sci-fi novels go, and I have to say that after spending 11 hours listening to the entire book, it’s pretty gosh darn good. Excep for some places where it kind of gets “abstract” (i.e. nonsensical), and the ending is just so rushed that I felt pretty pissed off at Orson Scott Card for ending the story so quickly. It’s as if he couldn’t decide if the last act should just be a brief conclusion or a longer, detailed look at the characters and story. What we ended up with was something that was neither here nor there, and ultimately left the reader wanting by the end.
Wait, this post wasn’t supposed to be about the book, got pretty carried away there. It was a joy listening to an audiobook for the first time in my life. They force me to pay attention to the story as this guy’s just going on and on in my ear without giving me any chance to take a break. Usually, no matter what book I’m reading (except Harry Potter), I’ll eventually get so tired of reading after awhile that my attention will start to wane or I’ll just give up and go do something else (usually that just means getting back on the computer). But audiobooks don’t give me a chance to get distracted because the story just keeps going regardless of anything I’m doing.
Ok screw it this post is just gonna be about Ender’s Game. Set in the future, the whole premise is that there’s an International Fleet (IF) that recruits kids from like 6 years old to train them to become soldiers and commanders of the fleet. All of this for the purpose of defending Earth from the “buggers”, some alien species that nearly wiped out the human race 80 years ago.
Now that I’ve written it down, I realise that the premise doesn’t seem as cool on paper as when you actually read the book. It’s essentially Hogwarts, except that instead of it being based in London and teaching kids magic, the Battle School is in freaking space, where kids learn how to fight in null gravity. Really epic.
Oh yeah and today’s the 2nd day of the lunar new year. Strangely I’m doing very very very visiting this year. Kind of miss it.
Happy CNY!
Read More
