Reviews tagging 'Suicidal thoughts'

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

7 reviews

crazylegs115's review against another edition

adventurous inspiring reflective sad tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death and Death

Moderate: Animal cruelty, Bullying, Violence, Blood, and War

Minor: Child abuse, Genocide, Panic attacks/disorders, Self harm, Suicidal thoughts, and Injury/Injury detail

bones_jackson's review against another edition

adventurous dark tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

Um dos melhores livros de ficção científica já escritos, com o mundo e seus problemas bem estabelecidos e os conflitos bem desenvolvidos 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Bullying, Child abuse, Child death, Death, Emotional abuse, Genocide, Suicidal thoughts, Torture, Violence, Blood, Murder, Gaslighting, Abandonment, Colonisation, War, and Injury/Injury detail

mika_the_librarian's review against another edition

adventurous challenging reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Child abuse, Child death, Death, Emotional abuse, Suicidal thoughts, Blood, and War

tomel's review against another edition

adventurous dark medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

1.5

The best thing I can say about Ender's Game is that it is bad in fascinating ways. There are so many intersections of awful in this book that I will probably never stop thinking about it. But it is an extremely bad book about how

a group of naked racist/misogynist children (plus one tomboy) are trained by the Eugenically Perfect War Messiah to commit a genocide but it's okay because they're going to adopt the new generation of the people they killed and raise them as their own.

Imagine if Paul Atreides was really into laser tag and felt the White Man's Burden and gave himself the occasional n-word pass. I strongly suspect that the book must have been significantly changed since the 1991 edition I read, because there's stuff in here that should be at least as notorious as the scene in the sewer in IT and nobody talks about them. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Bullying, Child abuse, Emotional abuse, Genocide, Physical abuse, Racial slurs, Toxic relationship, Violence, Xenophobia, Murder, Colonisation, and War

Moderate: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Cursing, Death, Misogyny, Sexism, Suicidal thoughts, Antisemitism, Religious bigotry, and Cultural appropriation

For some reason nobody talks about how the children in this book are constantly naked.

saskiahill's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No

5.0

Brilliant audiobook, really well performed. The book is clever, engaging and surprising - I'm listening for the first time as I near 30 and it's still relatable and brilliant, by no means just a kids book.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Bullying, Child death, Murder, and Abandonment

Moderate: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Body horror, Death, Emotional abuse, Gore, Suicidal thoughts, Violence, Blood, Gaslighting, Colonisation, War, and Injury/Injury detail

Minor: Antisemitism

jstarshine16's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark reflective tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Bullying, Child death, Death, Genocide, Gun violence, Panic attacks/disorders, Violence, Grief, Stalking, Murder, Toxic friendship, and War

Moderate: Child abuse, Cursing, Suicidal thoughts, Forced institutionalization, Xenophobia, Blood, Medical content, and Injury/Injury detail

Minor: Confinement, Emotional abuse, Misogyny, Religious bigotry, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , and Classism

stylo_'s review against another edition

challenging emotional reflective sad fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

It's striking that for someone with repellent and destructive beliefs in the real world, Card was able to write a novel so deeply concerned with the question of empathy in darkness. Ender's Game I first read as a child, taken with the verisimilitude of its depiction of children's mentalities and concerns, even if the characters' speech patterns and invulnerability to emotion strains credibility. As Card's introduction in the revised edition points out, adults often criticize the work for its "unrealistic" depiction of childhood, whereas children have the exact opposite reaction, appreciating the work's refusal to dumb down their internal dialogues and concerns for the sake of appeasing adult egos and perceptions. Yes, children are in fact concerned about war; they do think about the meaning of life; they do wonder at the cruelty of their peers and humanity; they do wonder how to atone for their sins. They are whipsmart and know more than you think.

The prose is sparse and utilitarian, the plot straightforward and fast-moving, but all in service of the themes: why are human beings so vicious towards the other? Why is empathy so hard to exercise? What is the point of war, and what does it do to us? And what does redemption look like? Intense cruelty towards the characters only sharpens the point on which these examinations take place. (During one pivotal reveal towards the end of the novel, I pictured Ender's face as none other than Aleksei Kravchenko's in Come and See, the greatest and most tragic war movie ever made.)

The young-adult nature of the book does mean that themes, while mentioned, are not fully explored. Exploration of the themes rests in the realm of allusion; there's an impressionistic character, the way so much is communicated through Ender's dreams, through the fantasy game he plays on the computer, and the all-too-brief conclusion which I still find thrilling and evocative. I look forward to seeing if these themes are expounded on in Speaker for the Dead. 

As a 30-something, this remains a striking, sad, and unique work.

(Caveats: There is some casual sexism in the book, and Card fumbles the ball on racial sensitivity with some of his characterizations - see for example the slang language used by the kids.) 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Bullying, Child abuse, Child death, Emotional abuse, Physical abuse, Violence, Murder, War, and Injury/Injury detail

Minor: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Racial slurs, Sexism, Suicidal thoughts, Xenophobia, and Colonisation