3.5 stars 
 I have heard bad things about Orson Scott Card - I have heard that he is not a good person. 
 This is not a review of him, it is a review of his book only, so please don't hate on me for quite liking it. 
 The concept itself is certainly my favourite thing about Ender's Game, and it's what drew me into it, despite the negativity around it - my friend told me it was ok but not great and my boyfriend said he hoped for my sake it was better than the film. 
 The book follows Ender Wiggin, who is shipped off aged 6 to a 'battle school' in the sky where he plays 'games' as he trains to fight the 'buggers' - an alien race that humanity is at war with. I found this intriguing and I did mostly like how it was done. 
 The plot was a bit more faulted - I liked all the games and that but I felt like there was no sense of a natural progression through the book - it's very much Ender does this for a bit, then Ender does this for a bit. I get that this is supposed to be because they're isolating Ender to make him brilliant but I don't think that makes complete sense and it just seems jumpy, like Card couldn't think of a better way to move the plot along. 
 Characters is a bit of an iffy area - I think I liked Ender, but it took a good while for me to warm to him and I thought he seemed pretty unrealistic - as did all the children really. I know they're supposed to be brilliant and special and not like other children and all that but they're little kids and they've been written more as kind of annoying, arrogant adults. 
 Another thing that is commonly pointed out, and that is unfortunately true, is the lack of female characters - we basically just have Valentine and Petra, both of whom seem to be presented as weaker than the boys. There is a sort of vague explanation for all this in the book but it certainly seems more sexist than logical. 
 I did think the writing was, on the whole, pretty decent but there were occasional brief switches into first person that are nothing more than incredibly annoying. They add nothing to anything, the only purpose they serve is to confuse the reader. 
 I can't say too much for emotional involvement - I did feel for Ender, I supposed, but I failed to have any moments where I was really emotionally involved, likely because he's just consistently miserable his whole life and you start to get a bit bored of feeling sorry for him. I felt more for Valentine, who makes mistakes and feels guilt and sadness. (view spoiler)[I also felt sad for the buggers, in the end. I like the bit where it says about how, when they saw the humans coming to attack them, they didn't feel angry or scared, only sad that the humans had not forgiven them. I also really, really wish they had a better name. Like, seriously, buggers? Did they let the children name them as well as fight them? (hide spoiler)] 
 Despite all the criticisms I have, I did very much enjoy this. I liked all the games, though I'm not sure how the zero gravity fighting was so useful as for them to be doing it all the time but still, it was fun. I also just like that there were aliens, and they were thought out and different, like they've actually been thought about as a race that can successfully survive while being so utterly different from humans. They've actually been thought about, rather than just being humans with antlers or whatever. I also like how the world is relatively realistic for the time, rather than just being modern day with fancier gadgets. I did think it was pretty good, certainly better than expected. I won't, however, be reading the sequels, as I feel Ender's Game finished where it was meant to and to continue it would likely be to stretch it out longer than it should be and make it worse in doing so.