When it comes to Science-Fiction/Fantasy literature, Orson Scott Card has got it all. He's received multiple awards for his writing, including two Hugo awards and two Nebula awards (for the same two books). His Ender's Game series is one of the most popular works of science fiction ever written. Instead of simply paraphrasing more of Card's Wikipedia page, I've decided to provide my diligent readers with a link.
If you haven't already read Ender's Game (the first one), then you need to click that link up there again. Seriously. Ender's Game is one of my favorite books ever. I've only met one person who didn't LOVE Ender's Game, but I can't remember who it was, so obviously that person's opinion is wrong. The twenty other novels/short stories (yep, twenty) that follow Ender's Game can get a little bit repetitive, but for those of you who love the series a lot (maybe too much?), they are definitely worth it.
That brings us to what I dislike about Orson Scott Card's writing. It's very, very repetitive. For those of you taking U.S. history, I would compare Card to the 19th century writer Horatio Alger, who basically wrote the same story over and over with different character names. Maybe Card isn't that bad, but he sure comes close. In all the books I've read by him (I've read four of his series, with twelve books in total), he fails to successfully create more than one type of main character. All of his main characters are exactly like Ender; unbelievably intelligent, difficult to relate to, and immensely dedicated to whatever goal they have. Even though Ender, Bean (from a series branching out from Ender's Game), Rigg (from Card's novel Pathfinder), and Bartholomew Coleman (from Card's Empire series) are all extremely cool characters, they are nothing like normal people. They seem to always know exactly what to do and when to do it. Card's characters also have an unbelievably ridiculous sense of duty. After killing all of his friends during their failed assassination attempt, Coleman (from the Empire series) has the following conversation with an unnamed agent,
"I wish we could pretend these guys were a bunch of foreign assassins," said Cole glumly.
"I know," said the agent. "You knew them, right?"
"They were my team," said Cole. "But they got distracted from the mission."
"What mission?"
"Preserve and protect the Constitution of the United States," said Cole. "No matter what you think of the President, assassinating him does not preserve of protect anything."
Pretty ridiculous, huh? After two whole books of getting to know and love Coleman's team, Card makes Coleman kill his entire team to, "Preserve and protect the Constitution of the United States". You know what the worst part is? The President they were trying to assassinate was actually a manipulative asshole; he needed to die! This annoying theme of duty and responsibility is repeated throughout Card's other novels, including Ender's overly repetitive sense of guilt towards his accidental xenocide (the genocide of an entire alien species).
Here is where I sum up my blog post. If you wanted, you could read a boring paraphrase of everything I've just written. Or, you could just listen to some peaceful music that I feel sums up my blog post very well.
I agree with your blog post completely. I love Orson Scott Card dearly,and I just finished Pathfinder (which was yet another great novel), but they are repetitive. However, this post shouldn't dissuade any perspective Orson Scott Card readers from picking up a copy of Ender's Game. It's worth it!
ReplyDeleteAh, I never get tired of Mr. Astley and his high waisted jeans.
ReplyDeleteGood review. I agree that, while Card is a great writer and comes up with interesting plots, his characters tend to repeat other characters. And they're often pretty hard to relate to (for those of us who are not super-driven geniuses.)
There are a number of synonyms you might consider in place of a**hole, but if you do want to stick with that word, note that it's one word, not two :)
I totally agree. Somehow, Card managed to get away with writing the same story twice, in Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow. The weird thing is that both are very good books, but actually have the same story.
ReplyDeleteI can't believe that I didn't find this post earlier. I loved Ender's Game and to me it set the standard for good science fiction novels. I love how there is so much going on in the story, it eventually intertwines all at the end of the book.
ReplyDeleteI have yet to read any of the other books in the Ender series. If you have any in this series you particularly recommend, let me know.
The Ender's Game sequels kill me. They ret-con in so much!
ReplyDeleteI like Ender's Shadow, but I am a fan of point-of-view narratives.