[brian]

I guess the issue of precociousness is one that would be difficult to approach regardless. It's a little ironic that I thought them far too precocious, yet you thought they were not precocious enough!

Tactical instruction - that would sound about right. The actual command school section was very short relative to the rest of the book, and divulged very little information other than who his mentor was. Sounds like OSC has developed it better elsewhere. In fact, the way this thread has gone, it sounds like the other novels in the series have some good strong points.

Either way, "Ender's Game" was written very engagingly - the reader-character association was very well constructed.