Ender’s Game
Author – Orson Scott Card
Pairing
Not only does the curiosity of what’s going to happen next keep you up at night wanting to finish, but the ending will keep you asking yourself and others questions. That’s why the perfect drink for this book is coffee based.
The drink I would pair with Ender’s game would be a coffee cocktail made with Mr Black’s, a coffee liqueur.
Mood
Adventurous and compelling
Similar to
The Hunger Games and Divergent
Review
Ender’s game is the first book in a series about humanity’s relationship with alien races. The first book centers around the Wiggin family and their influence over humanity’s response to the Buggers, an alien race that look like large ants that the Earth has been at war with for hundreds of years.
Ender’s Game begins with the military searching for a perfect general to fight the Buggers for the final battle. The military think they’ve found the perfect general in Andrew or “Ender”, the youngest Wiggin sibling. Ender is six years old when he is taken by the military to Battle School to train for a war that he’s only heard of as a made up game on the playground. At Battle School, Ender is thrust into groups of kids to play games that will one day emulate the estimated final battle with humanity’s rival. These games mirror the games young boys play today – video games and laser tag, except in space with zero gravity. Most of Ender’s time at Battle school is filled with training to fight the Buggers, developing relationships, and figuring out how to maneuver through the senior officer’s manipulative games. The questions remain: when will the Buggers return to destroy humanity? And who will save them?
On Earth, Ender’s siblings – Peter and Valentine remain. They have been deemed unfit for the military – as Peter is too violent and Valentine couldn’t hurt a fly. Instead of saving the world through the military, Peter and Valentine become political essayists, deciding together to influence global thought through an online platform similar to Reddit. They stay anonymous through the computer networks and remain so under the aliases Locke and Demosthenes. Using their alternate personalities, Val and Peter influence the public’s opinion by taking alternating views on war. Eventually, the two personalities are invited to take on more than just opinion on the internet and we see the potential an online commentator can have.
Ender’s game is ultimately about humanity waffling between cruelty and empathy. It explores themes of subjugation, fear of extermination, and the yearning for power. What makes this story urgent is how humanity continues to handle ‘the other’ and at times horrifying is that the main characters who have to address ongoing world issues are all children under 12. It seems the continuing theme is that the next generation is always having to save us all – but, will they? And should that be their goal?
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