The Ender’s Game movie isn’t slated for release till November. That means there’s plenty of time to dig into the books, and right now the Ender Quintet series is discounted in Kindle format!
Ender’s Game (4.5/5 stars, currently priced at $4.59)
Ender’s Game is the winner of the 1985 Nebula Award for Best Novel and the 1986 Hugo Award for Best Novel.
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.
At the publisher’s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management software (DRM) applied.
This book is also available in a 20th anniversary full-cast Audible audiobook edition, though that edition is not currently being offered at a discount.
Speaker For The Dead (4.5/5 stars, currently priced at $5.99)
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.
Speaker for the Dead, the second novel in Orson Scott Card’s Ender Quintet, is the winner of the 1986 Nebula Award for Best Novel and the 1987 Hugo Award for Best Novel.
At the publisher’s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management software (DRM) applied.
Xendocide (3.5/5 stars, currently priced at $5.99)
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 pequininos 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 pequininos require in order to become adults. The Startways Congress so fears the effects of the descolada, should it escape from Lusitania, that they have ordered eh destruction of the entire planet, and all who live there. The Fleet is on its way, a second xenocide seems inevitable.
Xenocide is the third novel in Orson Scott Card’s Ender Quintet.
At the publisher’s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management software (DRM) applied.
Children of the Mind (3.5/5 stars, currently priced at $5.99)
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 again 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.
Children of the Mind is the fourth book in Orson Scott Card’s Ender Quintet.
At the publisher’s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management software (DRM) applied.
Ender in Exile (4/5 stars, currently priced at $5.99)
After twenty-three years, Orson Scott Card returns to his acclaimed best-selling series with the first true, direct sequel to the classic Ender’s Game.
In Ender’s Game, the world’s most gifted children were taken from their families and sent to an elite training school. At Battle School, they learned combat, strategy, and secret intelligence to fight a dangerous war on behalf of those left on Earth. But they also learned some important and less definable lessons about life.
After the life-changing events of those years, these children—now teenagers—must leave the school and readapt to life in the outside world.
Having not seen their families or interacted with other people for years—where do they go now? What can they do?
Ender fought for humanity, but he is now reviled as a ruthless assassin. No longer allowed to live on Earth, he enters into exile. With his sister Valentine, he chooses to leave the only home he’s ever known to begin a relativistic—and revelatory—journey beyond the stars.
What happened during the years between Ender’s Game and Speaker for the Dead? What did Ender go through from the ages of 12 through 35? The story of those years has never been told. Taking place 3000 years before Ender finally receives his chance at redemption in Speaker for the Dead, this is the long-lost story of Ender.
For twenty-three years, millions of readers have wondered and now they will receive the answers. Ender in Exile is Orson Scott Card’s moving return to all the action and the adventure, the profound exploration of war and society, and the characters one never forgot.
On one of these ships, there is a baby that just may share the same special gifts as Ender’s old friend Bean…