Rating: 
(20 reviews)
Author: Orson Scott Card
Publisher: Tor Science Fiction
Product Description
This boxed set contains Ender’s Game, Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, and Children of the Mind.
Ender’s Game
Winner of the Hugo and Nebula Awards
In order to develop a secure defense against a hostile alien race’s next attack, government agencies breed child geniuses and train them as soldiers. A brilliant young boy, Andrew “Ender” Wiggin lives with his kind but distant parents, his sadistic brother Peter, and the person he loves more than anyone else, his sister Valentine. Peter and Valentine were candidates for the soldier-training program but didn’t make the cut—young Ender is the Wiggin drafted to the orbiting Battle School for rigorous military training.
Ender’s skills make him a leader in school and respected in the Battle Room, where children play at mock battles in zero gravity. Yet growing up in an artificial community of young soldiers Ender suffers greatly from isolation, rivalry from his peers, pressure from the adult teachers, and an unsettling fear of the alien invaders. His psychological battles include loneliness, fear that he is becoming like the cruel brother he remembers, and fanning the flames of devotion to his beloved sister.
Is Ender the general Earth needs? But Ender is not the only result of the genetic experiments. The war with the Buggers has been raging for a hundred years, and the quest for the perfect general has been underway for almost as long. Ender’s two older siblings are every bit as unusual as he is, but in very different ways. Between the three of them lie the abilities to remake a world. If, that is, the world survives.
Speaker for the Dead
In the aftermath of his terrible war, Ender Wiggin disappeared, and a powerful voice arose: The Speaker for the Dead, who told the true story of the Bugger War.
Now, long years later, a second alien race has been discovered, but again the aliens’ ways are strange and frightening…again, humans die. And it is only the Speaker for the Dead, who is also Ender Wiggin the Xenocide, who has the courage to confront the mystery…and the truth.
Xenocide
The war for survival of the planet Lusitania will be fought in the hearts of a child named Gloriously Bright.
On Lusitania, Ender found a world where humans and Pequeninos and the Hive Queen could all live together; where three very different intelligent species could find common ground at last. Or so he thought.
Lusitania also harbors the descolada, a virus that kills all humans it infects, but which the Pequeninos require in order to become adults. The Starways Congress so fears the effects of the descolada, should it escape from Lusitania, that they have ordered the destruction of the entire planet, and all who live there. The Fleet is on its way, a second xenocide seems inevitable.
Children of the Mind
The planet Lusitania is home to three sentient species: the Pequeninos; a large colony of humans; and the Hive Queen, brought there by Ender. But once against the human race has grown fearful; the Starways Congress has gathered a fleet to destroy Lusitania.
Jane, the evolved computer intelligence, can save the three sentient races of Lusitania. She has learned how to move ships outside the universe, and then instantly back to a different world, abolishing the light-speed limit. But it takes all the processing power available to her, and the Starways Congress is shutting down the Net, world by world.
Soon Jane will not be able to move the ships. Ender’s children must save her if they are to save themselves.
5 Comments
I would like to see this set made available for the Kindle Reader. I absolutely loved the first two novels Enders Game and Enders Shadow. I think this set would be an absolute bargain if it were made available for $25 for the whole set in Kindle form. I hope Amazon.com and the publisher comes to some sort of deal for the Kindle.
I was so happy to have found this box set of the Ender’s Game series for $20 that I couldn’t pass it up. I am hoping to get the other set, Ender’s Shadow. I read the whole box set in about a month. I would recommend it to any sci fi or fantasy reader out there. In fact, I think everyone should read it.
A colleague and I were discussing books we had read. I told him I read all the works of Asimov (fiction), Bradbury, Clarke, Heinlen, Ludlum, Clancy, Herbert’s Dune series, LOTR, etc.
He was surprised that I didn’t mention Orson Scott Card’s Ender books. I asked why he thought they were worth reading and he replied that “Most modern science fiction stories used parts of these books as their theme.”
Well that’s a pretty big claim so I bought and read the 4 books. In the prologue, Card dismissed Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy as a re-write of The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire. That’s a pretty bold statement from a mediocre writer – particulary one who’s work pales in comparison.
I’m not going to spoil the plot. In fact, I’m not even going to discuss it at all since plenty of other reviewers have done that already.
I will say this however: The storyline bordered on ridiculous and was annoying slow. My advice is to read these books after you complete the aforementioned author’s work. Then, and only then, come to me and tell me how unique and groundbreaking the Ender series is.
Excellent series. Although the book was written for teens, it was challenging enough for adults. Some critics say that children don’t think that way regardless of their IQs. But it doesn’t really matter. The point is, it’s a great story. There’s plenty of action in each chapter and a good discussion of the perils of war.
Great series. I have read the series at least 4 times. Ender is a great character and Orson Scott Card is a genius!