Post 500! (also, manipulating children)

Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card (Starscape, 1977, 2002)

So, Card's a little controversial. But if I knocked every author off the list for having views I find abhorrent (ahem, Tolstoy) I'd have a reading list of approximately zero. What really interested me in this book is how many of my male friends have told me this was the book that made them like reading. (Awww!) And yet, without the movie coming out, I might never have gotten around to reading it.

In brief, Ender is a genius. He's been monitored for much of his young life to see if he is The One who will help them win the ongoing war against alien creatures called Buggers. (Ugh, that name.) So he's chosen and gets sent to Battle School with a bunch of other similar kids, and there's training and strategy and armies and creepy psychological games, etc. These are interspersed with conversations between Colonel Graff, Ender's champion, and various other military figures. Oh, and along the way we digress for a whole crazy side plot involving Ender's two siblings (also geniuses) and their attempts to shape world policy by becoming (what would now be known as) Internet intellectual personalities.

And the games get harder and the psychological toll more brutal, with each step more trying than the last. It was hard to read, especially as you keep remembering that Ender is a child - his classmates too. He is six at the start of the book, and twelve (if I remember right) at the end of the main action. Genius or not, it's too much.

That said, it's delightful reading Ender's analyses and strategies. He's definitely clever and unorthodox. It's much easier to stay in the games themselves than to journey outside them, to the hard stuff. And then the end of the book, post-climax, goes off in all sorts of crazy directions. (In my opinion, the film handled this much better.)

To conclude, I'm glad I read this, and I understand why it meant so much to so many young readers, but it was a challenging book in many of the wrong ways. I need something that makes me despair a little less.

Shifting allegiances

Insurgent - Veronica Roth (Katherine Tegen Books, 2012)

So, maybe it was the fact that I read Divergent twice in one weekend, but while that book remains vivid in my mind, this one has largely flitted away in the 10 (?) days since I finished it. It was good - not as good as the first one but still - and yet I find myself unable to really write about it.

In all fairness, this may not be the book's fault. Since finishing it, I got engaged (!!!!!) and suddenly almost all my brainpower is devoted to wedding planning. I never expected to be this kind of bride ("oh, I knew you would be," says the fiancé) but here I am so I suppose it's to be expected that this book would get a little lost. Why didn't I write about it sooner?

Moving on. Tris remains pretty awesome, but she's frustrating and difficult in this novel. Maybe I'm overly attached to Four, but (spoiler alert?) a lot of the quieter drama here revolves around how poorly they communicate, and to me it seems like it's almost always her fault. We should cut her some slack though - not only is she a teenager feeling her way into a first relationship, but she's also near the epicenter of the upending of their entire society.

People (both individuals and groups) seem to switch sides pretty often, and villains get complicated. (I approve of this.) I also approve of the continued lack of love triangle, although the cheeseball in me found myself rooting for one. (I like Tris, but I also like antiheroes, and I had a whole thing happening in my head.)

I can't figure out how exactly the last one will turn out, but it's sitting on my coffee table, so if I ever manage to get off the wedding blogs, I guess I will find out.