[I, Brian]

The opening scene is purposefully set up to force the reader to sympathise with Ender. It's a clever trick, forcing the reader to associate via emoting. The death aspect seems a little over done, though.

There are elements of Ender's Game that I like, but also others that I don't. The individual scenes are well-written, but there seemed a lot missing behind the premise and plot. The strategy of it all just didn;t seem well-thought out at all - and issues such as children being required to figure out how to defeat the aliens, because no adult human was capable of thinking in third dimensional space like they, all seemed pretty lame. But I could see why he did it - he needed to tie that in with the whole "innocence" theme.