Catch up

Time to change my pen name to Vanessa Van Winkle, ya think?

Surprisingly, I've been making more progress than I thought. I updated the writing meter for the revisions/additions and it's up to 7k. It's actually more when you consider that I cut out a sh*tload of over-writing and still ended up with a higher net word count (so far). That's all I'll say on the writing, or I'll start whining, and that won't be pretty.

As for that horrible bug I picked up over a week ago, I seemed to have gotten over the worst of it, thank god. I was sick of being sick and really begining to wonder how it was possible to produce so much snot and still be upright. [/gross out] Plus with a last minute project dumped on the department, I didn't really have the option of taking time off but that meant I was doubly worn out by the time I got home in the evenings.

Anywho....

So I dug into the TBR pile again and pulled up Ender's Game.




Product Description from Amazon:

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.

What a fantastic book!! I'm almost done but don't foresee it book falling apart at this point. I really love the character og Ender, and I love the deft yet bare-bones/subtle world building. Not sure if I'll continue with the series because there is an overall sense of, I dunno-- bleakness? futility?--to the story. Yeah, I'm a wuss for the hopeful/in-a-better-place ending, if not the happy one. :-P (

btw, over on Amazon I noticed that the author had a 'response' to some of the negative reviews posted. While his response was level-headed/calm, it also felt slightly 'lecturing' and wholly unnecessary, imo, given that out of 2,669 reviews(!!!), 2,118 of them were 5 star, 323 were 4 star. I really don't think authors can win this one. Unless you're correcting a point of fact, you gotta let people have their opinions, right, wrong, hateful, ignorant or indifferent, just walk away from the keyboard. *my opinion* on his response is in the minority, since 434 out of 456 found his comment helpful. *g* Still giving thumbs waay for this one. I feel like digging up my old copy of Lord of the Flies now.

btw part 2: I know some peeps don't care for rec's that are little more than 'I loved this book!!' and the synopsis, without an analytical breakdown of why the reader (me in this case) loved the book. Well... I'm lazy. lol. Plus I tend to be more analytical about why a book didn't work, while, if it did work, I respond on a more emotional level. Taking into account that I read a lot--with many book either 'mehs' or DFNs, if I make the effort to post about a book, take that as a bona fide handstand, shout-it-from-the-rooftops recommendation.