Orson Scott Card's Amazon Review of Ender's Game

"No book, however good, can survive a hostile reading."<p>Is that really true? The first Orwell book I read (<i>Homage to Catalonia</i>) was required for a history class -- a class that had previously assigned some truly awful literature. So I was pessimistic and I read it grudgingly at first. But halfway through the book, I realized I loved it.

Unfortunately does nothing to change my view that authors should probably keep away from their own reviews. If he'd had some brilliant new insight that would be one thing, but instead he just comes off as slightly more defensive than anyone who has sold tens of millions of books should.<p>I guess it was 1999 when this was written, though, so the norms for online reviews had not yet been established.

I always thought of Ender's Game of something like a child's book. Something like Harry Potter to LoTRs. I don't think there's anything wrong with that, I mean, Harry Potter got a whole bunch of people reading. But seeing this explanation helps me better understand why I feel like that, and what it means.<p>I'd call this an analysis more than a review. Whatever you think it is, I found it a pretty honest and open piece coming from someone who has such a personal stake in the book.

I'll just point out that the thing I didn't like about enders game was that the book felt too monotone. It has a great twist at the end, but everything leading up to it is linear, predictable, and while initially exciting, quickly becomes uninteresting.

<i>I found that the less I put on the stage, the more the audience would imagine a much more compelling set than I could ever build</i><p>Analogous to Card's statement, lately I've come to realize that I like movies better when they don't explicitly tell you everything. I think a good formula for writing is to lay all the facts out, then remove one or two of them from the script.

It's hard to see an author so defensive about their work. There will always be naysayers. Ender's game has persisted for so long in a way that so many of it's peers hasn't.<p>We have to remember that negative experiences effect our users more, and complaints will in general outnumber the praise, even if the the number of users who are unhappy are outnumbered by happy users by orders of magnitude.<p>Alternatively, haters gonna hate.

The problem with Scott Card is that he substitutes proper character development with "let's make all the characters naive children who eventually realize all the adults are manipulative". Its a total copout, and he doesn't just do it wth the ender books.<p>Oh yeah, that and his crazy is often showing...

It is a little funny to see Ender's Game on HN today. Tomorrow I'm going on a fishing trip with my 10 year old son. As our evening entertainment, he wanted me to read him Ender's Game. I've got the book already packed in my bag.

Very classy. Plus gives a little insight into how a writer approaches it as a craft. Love to read things like this.

I love Ender's Game and all of OSC's other books, but it seems like he might be a terrible guy... more on that in this very interesting interview: <a href="http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2000/02/03/card" rel="nofollow">http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2000/02/03/card</a>