>>1740688I find it hard to imagine a more objectionable novel than Ender's Game; perhaps the content of the Left Behind series or the standard piece of right-wing "milSF" trash would be more offensive, but fortunately the technical deficiencies of these books make them more or less unreadable. The disturbing thing about Ender's Game is that Card is a good craftsman of prose; he makes the pages turn, he's an effective manipulator. In the early chapters, he inhabits the child mind convincingly; Ender's bewilderment, his confusion with the adult world, his exaggerated fear of bullies, all seemed authentic to me, until I realised they were all too earnest and in the service of pornography. But still I kept reading, as though hooked by a nasty but compelling piece of propaganda. Just as The Eye of Argon is well-composed enough to bring home the awfulness of its prose, the prose in Ender's Game is good enough to bring home the horror of its content.