I don't think I've ever been more taken aback by any book than this one. Hearing the phrase 'child genius' in connection with this book, I was expecting something more like: 
 A faerie-obsessed twelve-year-old with a crush on an older woman that isn't even a part of his species. 
 Not a six year old with an inclination for violent, sadistic murder and mass genocide. 
 Of course, both murders were an accident, and after watching the movie I've decided that I know who I want casted as the aforementioned Artemis Fowl, but this is beside the point. 
 Utterly perplexing and emotionally disturbing, Ender's Game left me literally breathless. I do not use the word 'literally' with the intention of the word 'figuratively.' There are scenes in this book which, after my reading of them at the inappropriate hour of 3 a.m., left my heart beating too fast and my mind whirring too violently for my lungs to cooperate either- they wanted to join the party. 
 Andrew "Ender" Wiggins is a young- and I mean young child. Six-years-old at the outset, and twelve-years-old by the end of his training, Ender undergoes mental and emotional torture that would possibly destroy the mind of any grown man. Ender, however, brought up on the vicious torture of his sadistic, possibly legally psychotic older brother, the compassion of his sister, the resentment of his parents, and the hate of all those around him, had already, by (again) six years of age, learned to survive torture. 
 Brought to a school that rejected his too-violent older brother and too-compassionate older sister, Ender was forced to adapt to a life that expected him to be competitive, violent, and apathetic. Made to play games that simulated attacks on an alien race that threatened human society, Ender is molded into the perfect tool of destruction. 
 Meanwhile, back home, his older brother Peter is finding himself more and more comparable to Hitler, and Valentine, his sister, fears her own changes. 
 Incredibly thrilling, and disproportionately upsetting, Ender's Game tore me apart and left me hanging. I cannot aptly describe what it did to me, or what made it so magnificent. But it was magnificent.