Hive

Back in my freshman year at Uni, during a free reading day in English class, I had forgotten to bring my own book. And so, I randomly picked Ender's Game from the bookshelf, and began to read.

And hey, it was pretty good.

(Spoilers below, in case you're also reading the book.)

The novel tells the story of Ender Wiggin, in a world where humanity is recovering from two attacks by an alien race of "Formics". Earth's International Fleet (IF) is desperately seeking new leaders to attack and suppress the Formics before they launch a third invasion. Ender's two elder siblings have shown promise in the eyes of the IF, but have been rejected for their personality flaws: one is too ruthless and the other too compassionate to make a good leader. The IF allow Ender's parents an exception to the two-child policy, and Ender is born.

Ender is accepted into a "Battle School" for similar children, where they compete in teams against each other in zero-gravity environments using stun guns. Ender quickly rises above his peers, despite how the instructors constantly stack the deck against him: he leads a young and inexperienced team, sometimes has to fight two other teams at once, and so on. Eventually, he "graduates" from Battle School, to Command School to finish his training to command the IF's offensive fleet. This time, he's given multiple simulations, progressively more difficult (just like his battles in Battle School), and he slowly grows tired of these "games". He tries to cheat his final test by blowing up the enemy's planet instead of attacking their ships, and wins...

...Only to find out that these "simulations" were real, and that he had been manipulated to "cheat" and win the final battle against the real Formics.

Although Ender's Game is obviously a hero's journey narrative, it offers some interesting twists to avoid feeling generic. Ender isn't given a mentor in the traditional sense; rather, he is intentionally isolated socially from his peers, and manipulated at every step by the Battle School instructors to advance his progress. Ender is intentionally made to feel tired of the games, which leads to his final victory over the Formics' home planet. I still consider the instructors' manipulation to count as a "mentor" in the novel, guiding Ender through his journey but without his knowledge of what's going on. The book's ending is also very intriguing. Where Harry Potter has some sort of feast or party at the end of each book, and Star Wars ends with victory ceremonies, Ender himself reacts negatively to his victory. He is shocked and saddened that his "cheating" had just eradicated an entire species, and ends up passing out for multiple days. I think the message the author's trying to convey is that sometimes the optimal choice is morally questionable. The instructors were desperate to end the Human-Formic conflict, and resorted to manipulating Ender. They deceived him to prevent his compassion from getting in the way of the Formics' defeat, and it ended up paying off.