Both novels would win both the Hugo and the Nebula awards. Since then, the epic expanded to a total of four novels, the last of which appeared on the bookshelves this summer. Do not be surprised if it steals the Hugo and Nebula again. This, in short, is a masterpiece. Ender's Game seems at first to be familiar territory.
Earth is at war with aliens.
A boy is being trained on a military school in space to fight them. Ender Wiggins, the protagonist, at age six unwittingly becomes a murderer, and at the same time just as unwittingly, a training candidate for commanding the human fleet. He's third child of a family of child geniuses, his birth allowed by the authorities only because it was hoped that he might have both the gentleness of his older sister, and the savageness of his older brother. He does, as well as prodigious talents for strategy and leadership. He rises through the ranks of Battle School and Command School unbelievably fast, though with immense pain and suffering.