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Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

I thought I hated sci-fi until I read this book.

The reason I thought I hated it was because the only kids in school who read sci-fi were these raging geeks. Being a moderate geek myself, I did everything possible to distance myself from the raging geeks.

Later on in life, I learned to embrace my inner geek AND my outer fashionista. I came to a happy medium. It was then that a coworker first let me borrow her copy of this book.

I figured I'd at least give it a try, so as not to offend her. I thought it would be totally ridiculous and badly written.

I couldn't put it down. From the very first page, Orson Scott Card hooked me and got me involved and interested in Andrew "Ender" Wiggin's life. I returned the book to my coworker the next day and demanded to borrow the sequel. Pleased that she'd converted me, she happily complied.

The first installment in the Ender saga is about a six-year-old boy named Ender. He's extremely gifted and precocious. He doesn't want to be. He just wants to be normal. But duty always calls him to use his gifts -- sometimes in terrible ways.

The book is set in the future (it is sci-fi, after all), and Earth is at war with an alien race called the "buggers" (so called because the resemble giant ants). In a desperate, last-ditch measure, Earth has opened a "Battle School" to train the commanders and soldiers of tomorrow.

Ender qualifies to go to this school, but he doesn't want to. The brutal atmosphere of the school forces him to do some brutal things in order to survive.

Some people don't think children are capable of thinking the way Ender does (as Card mentions in his introduction to the latest edition of the book). But it struck me right away that there's a little Ender in all of us: we don't want to be harsh or brutal, but we're sometimes forced to that point. We don't know if that makes us less human or more so.

This is an excellent book and a fast read, at that. I highly recommend it.