Book Review: A War of Gifts
Book three in Jamie’s 52 books in 52 weeks challenge.
I first read Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card when I was twelve or thirteen. It’s the story of a young kid who is taken to Battle School (where soldiers are prepared to lead fleets against an alien race) and his experience while he’s there. It’s one of the best books I’ve ever read. It has great characters, and the descriptions of fighting while in zero gravity are amazing. I read it every couple of years, and actually started reading it again after this week’s book.
Truly it’s difficult to create that magic over and over again. Card has written a few other novels that are almost as good as Ender’s Game, but none of them seem to capture that magic he had with the first novel. And a bunch are totally shoddy. He’s written more than one novel that I’ve given up on before I reach the halfway mark.
A War of Gifts would have been one of those that I gave up on, but it’s so short I figured I may as well finish it for the review. It’s the size of a novella, and probably would have been better off included with a group of short stories. Why do I keep going back to Card? I guess that demonstrates what an impact his first (actually first two or three to be honest) books had on me.
It takes place at Battle School during the same time period as Ender’s Game. Another young boy named Zeck is taken to start training. He’s a religious fundamentalist who has been raised as a pacifist, the story goes on to explore what happens to him. Ender is a small part of the story, and ends up helping Zeck in the end, but that’s the only real tie into the universe. Even though it uses characters from the other stories, they’re all very flat. It includes one segment from Ender’s home on Earth that stands out and stops the flow totally. It doesn’t seem to serve a purpose other than to include more characters from the original book.
In the end Card seems to not be able to make up his mind what the message is supposed to be, and instead tries to cover all his bases. Should we admore Zeck for what he believes? Mock him? Is Battle Station making the right choice in being secular, or should they be allowing religious worship? Nothing is really answered. The dialogue seems stilted, the child characters are either talking like adults or like my seven-year-old.
Blegh. Skip this and read Ender’s Game instead. C-
Other reviews from the challenge.
- Natasha reviews Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen and A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
- Brian reviews Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O’Dell
- Kevin reviews Dies The Fire by S.M. Stirling
- Jamie reviews Scott Kelby’s 7-Point System for Adobe Photoshop CS3 by Sctt kelby
I loved Ender’s Game, too, but wrote Card off as a one shot wonder after reading the next few books in the series. It was like they were written by a totally different author.
I read his seventh son series(Alvinmaker). I enjoyed them very much. I am not a huge science fiction reader and so have not read any of his scifi.
I’ve read almost all of his book, I am behind on his women of the bible series.
I like card because he explores questions in his novels and delves deeply into character motivation. This was also my third book of the year. I basically agree with you. This was a nice little fix but you aren’t hurt by missing it. I basicaly think it is a nice fireside read/listen for a lazy holiday evening. I’ll post my review sometime soon. I’ve got maybe four or six books finished since then. So I need to get more reviews out.
Thanks for the like too!
Huge Card fan here. I really enjoyed this book–probably because I missed reading about Ender and his world, so it was a nostalgic pleasure as much as anything. I thought there were some real gems in there though–I especially liked the thought about God revealing to man what man can understand scientifically at the time–I couldn’t begin to recreate it. Card is amazing when it comes to the complexities of people, and the whole healing element of the main character was insightful.
Speaker for the Dead is still probably my favorite–he really only wrote Ender’s game so he could write that one. Ender’s speaking at the father’s funeral blew me away at the time.
[...] than the horrible book by Card I read earlier this year, but not as good as some of his other early [...]