I’ll just second the majority position: loved Ender’s Game, *Speaker for the Dead[/í] was very good (but started a little slow) . . . after that, beware. Haven’t read any of the Shadow books.
I’ve read the entire Ender’s Game series, and it gets unreadable somewhere in the middle of Xenocide, but the downhill decline starts somewhere in Speaker for the Dead.
As to Ender’s Shadow series, I’ve only read the first two books, but it just reads horribly. In Ender’s Shadow, it seems like Card is trying to say “Hey! Look at Bean! I kind of stuck him in the original book for a reason! He’s actually SMARTER than Ender, even though I wrote the book about how Ender is the best of the best. See, I tricked you, because Bean is really the best! So now go out and buy this new series and see how well I tricked you.”
I enjoyed both Ender’s Game and Speaker for the Dead, and have since then felt compelled to read all the rest. I’ve not regretted reading them, although I didn’t enjoy them as much as the first two. There are a couple things that continue to irk me:
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OSC barely describes anyone physically. I don’t need a thorough rundown of appearance, but my mind filled in all the blanks with something very vague. So Graff is pudgy, and Peter has dark hair, and OSC might have mentioned Novinha’s dark skin once. What’s funny is that at this point, descriptions like that would seem incredibly out-of-place and off-topic, but I still wouldn’t have minded a little bit more physical description from the beginning.
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I really hate the term “making babies” that is used every so often in a few of the Shadow books. Does anyone really say that?
Nevertheless, Ender’s Game is one book I recommend often.
Man, I love the Enderverse. Such a cool concept of putting kids into training to fight an enemy that provides so much pressure that adults can’t handle it.
Chalk me up as another person who has had the book loaned by a friend. Since then, I’ve read all of the Ender books (except the First Meetings, which I now have and will start this week) and many of Card’s other books (I stopped after the second book of the Alvin Maker series because it is taking Card so long to finish).
A few random thoughts:
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Some advice to the OP. If you are inclined to continue the series, read the rest of the main Ender books (Speaker, Xenocide, and Children of the Mind), then wait a while before tackling the Shadow series. There was a few years between my finishing CotM before reading Ender’s Shadow. I think it enhances the impact of the Shadow series if you’ve had a little while to digest the original books. It kind of builds Ender up in your mind to mythic proportions. It makes it more fun because of the way they talk about him in the Shadow books.
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XWalrus2 hit the nail of the head about the quality of the main Ender series. EG excellent. SFTD, very good. Xenocide, good…until about halfway through. CotM stinks, but you probably need to finish it for twisted closure.
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The Shadow (Bean) series is excellent, but in a different way. Other than the first book, a parallel novel to EG, the rest of the series is more geopolitical than scifi. It follows what becomes of, and what the world does with, the Little Generals they trained to fight the Buggers. Especially those from the Legendary Ender’s Jeesh. Very good, but not much scifi.
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Again, I agree with XWalrus2. I thought a lot of Bean’s story stole Ender’s thunder.
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As to Peter and Val. I liked the angle. At the time I read it, it seemed a bit far fetched. But time and progress have exhonerated Card a bit. When he wrote it, there was no such thing as the internet and no such thing as bloggers. Two decades later, it seems somewhat plausible that net trolls could alter world events. I offer that if you can’t accept that two kids could change the world with their blogging, it is equally unacceptable the entire notion of Battleschool.
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Card apparently has one possibly two more Ender novels in mind. The first, which he is currently working on, is a story of one of Ender’s many space jaunts. He goes to a colony world (the story takes place between Ender’s Game and SFTD). I would guess you need to have read the Shadow series before reading this one. The other book, which he appears undecided about, is Mazer Rackham. That is the book I hope he writes. The first bugger wars and the story of Mazer Rackham is an untapped goldmine.
Yes, but the influential bloggers of today are not 9 and 11 years old, nor are they getting elected World Leader or something.
That is true. We’ve also not been invaded by Buggers.
And when Richard Meyer’s term as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs runs out, they are replacing him with Peter Pace, not Dennis the Menace! 
A few things:
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No one knew Peter and Val were kids when they were writing as Locke and Demosthenes.
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The Battle School victories made people more willing to put their fates in the hands of the young. Plus, Peter was the brother of ENDER[sup]TM[/sup]
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When Peter took on the title of Hegemon, it no longer meant Leader of the World. One of the biggest subplots of the Shadow series is how Peter made it into the Leader of the World. (I can’t go into it anymore than this without spoiling it).
It is a bit convenient at times, but if we buy into a world where the military trains children to lead the armies of Earth, it isn’t a stretch to buy Peter and Val duping the blogoshere.
Those Wiggin children had good genetic stock.
I think, judging from the opinions here, I’ll definitely read Speaker for the Dead, but maybe I’ll avoid the rest of the original series after that and try out Ender’s Shadow if I’m still hankering for more.
I too saw the surprise ending a mile away, but it didn’t ruin it for me, because I think the point was to see how Ender reacted to the surprise.
I thought the Demosthenes/Locke story was a bit rushed, but I did find it amusing. It seems Card’s vision of the net was one with a centralized authority, so I cut him some slack about the influence they attain. If the internet weren’t a free-for-all, maybe something like that could happen. (Still, LOL at **Ludovic’s ** troll comment.)
I can’t imagine how they would make a movie of this. It would be horrible. Either it would be painful, and then boring, as they simply show the torture they put Ender through in all the successive trials, or it would in fact wind up looking like a “rah, rah, war is cool” story. The whole damn point is the stuff going on inside Ender’s head.
Hatrack.com (OSCards Site) has an update on the movie from March 30th 2005 with people from “Troy” doing the screenplay.
IMDB has it slated for a 2006 Release.
Shadow of the Giant recently came out.
I liked Game, Xenocide, and Ender’s Shadow and Shadow of Hedgemon in that order the best.
Overall the best Series Ive ever read. First two Shadow books where real page turners for me.
There is also a “First Meetings” book attributed to the “Enderverse” out there as well. It has a few short stories, and the original Enders Game Short as well.
I too second Bob 55 spoiler comment on Xenocide.
I think its " ok " that Card doesnt describe people as well.
This is despite the fact that I still call him pip-po and not pipe-po. I’m not gonna change. 
The Enderverse: First Meetings book contains the following stories: (1) The Original Ender’s Game Short Story, (2) The Story of Ender’s Dad as a boy, (3) The Story of Ender’s Dad meeting Ender’s Mom and (4) Ender’s First Meeting with Jane (you have to read SftD before you meet Jane).
I think the “virtual reality” parts of EG have potential – and you’d be able to get some of Ender’s thoughts in there, too, at the same time as getting some eye candy in. The rest would just seem like one long training story.
I think the Battle Room scenes would be incredible.
It is almost like a sports movie in that all the other scenes largely tie together matches in the Battle room (until the end when it goes to the Simulator Battles).
I see what you’re saying, though I hadn’t looked at it that way. I considered (after having read all but the last book in each of the series) Ender to have been kind of a one-trick pony. He was unequalled as a strategist, but Bean was smarter. Apologies for the lousy analogy, but it’s kind of like comparing Bobby Fischer to Richard Feynman; there’s no question of who’s smarter and no question of who’s the better chess player.
I loved Ender’s Game, but by the time I finished Xenocide I decided that I will never pick up another book by Card again. For me, this is filed in my “There can be only one” category. Leave the rest alone.
I read Ender’s Game last year. It’s part of my Easton Press collection, and I figured I’d better read it. It was okay, I guess; but I could see the ending coming from a ‘fur piece’.
I’d say it’s worth a read if you’re into SF, but only because it’s so well-known.
I’ve always wondered what I would have thought of Ender’s Game had I read it as an adult first. I read it for the first time when I was 12 or 13, and it resonated so strongly with me. I was amazed that Card was able to write the story and really make it feel like he was in the heads of those kids. I also really identified with Ender and the other kids because I was a smart kid, and I could definitely see at that point in time how adults could come to rely on super-smart kids to fight their battles for them.
I read the whole series of the first three books, read Ender’s Shadow immediately when it came out, and have read the sequels to that at a more leisurely pace, as I don’t think they’re nearly as good as the original three. As an adult it’s a lot easier for me to see Card’s religious and political beliefs coming out in his work, and it makes me mad how the characters I loved as children in Ender’s Game and Ender’s Shadow change so drastically as adults - honestly, I really think Bean’s character by the time Shadow Puppets rolls around is so far from who Bean originally was that Card might as well have made him a different character. I also read Children of the Mind at some point and thought it was ridiculously bad.
My mom uses Ender’s Game in her advanced 8th grade english class, and I think she’s yet to have a kid not like the book or identify with the characters. I still consider it one of my favorite books, have read it at least 20 times, and named my cat after Petra Arkanian.
mlerose raised an interesting point: at what age did you first read Ender’s Game?
I was about 22 or 23.
Unboxed spoilers ahead!
I first read Ender’s Game when I was 13, and loved it. I still do, even though rereading it now, I can see the “plot twist” foreshadowed throughout the book, whereas at age 13 it was a complete shock. However, I don’t think the novel loses any of its power even knowing that Ender is actually fighting the war, as it’s far more about the psychological turmoil and impossible pressure that Ender is placed under, as well as the aftereffects of what Card terms “xenocide.”
For me, the chapter in which Ender discovers the bugger-built remnants of the Fantasy Game and the Hive Queen are just as powerful (if not moreso) than the actual revelation that Ender has been leading the war. It’s also why I vastly prefer the Ender series over the Shadow series; while it’s true that the Ender books sort of descend into metaphysical lunacy by CotM, they’re still extremely well-researched, carefully plotted books that consistently focus on tremondously brilliant but painfully flawed characters. I could never get into Bean’s head the way I could Ender’s- he was TOO brilliant, TOO much the perfect soldier. Whereas Ender was written as the paragon of humanity, as empathic as he was intelligent, Bean was the outsider looking in, unmatched intellectually but unable for the longest time to comprehend emotional influences.
There’s also the matter that Card’s political and religious views play a much larger role in the Shadow books than the Ender books (which, if anything, seem to promote a liberal/ humanist view of the world- certainly, Ender is the most genuinely humanist protagonists I can think of). Given that I am neither Mormon nor socially conservative, this undoubtedly dampened their impact somewhat.
I was 25, at least, and I was still able to identify strongly with Ender. Poweful book, and I knew of the “twist” in advance, too.