Have u read enders game?

[Estelindis]

I've read and loved all the Ender books and the Bean books. Orson Scott Card is a genius - he writes very involving plots, brilliant characters and fantastic dialogue (it's easy to tell he began as a playwright).

[Wojiz]

Orson Scott Card's definitely a genius. I own all the Ender and Bean books, all 8 of them, have read them all about a hundred times and have plenty of other of Card's books. The psychology, the intrigue, the politics... I love all the books, but if I had to pick a favorite, it would be Ender's Shadow, hands down. Card didn't really retroactively change anything. I've analyzed both of the books a hundred times and the actions are the same in each, they're just colored by the interpretation of the character they're centered around, which is the way it should be as both books are told from the mind of the character. Bean was supposed to be a kind of minor, out-of-the-way character in Game because that's what his personality is like, that's what he's suited to; hence, Ender's 'Shadow'.

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On the topic of exploiting loopholes, Ender won things that were basically unwinnable by conventional strategy, and I quote one of the Game conversations post-Giant's death, "Isn't it nice to know that Ender can do the impossible?". The situation with an exhausted Dragon army against an 'army' twice Dragon's size and readily prepared. Ender didn't 'exploit a loophole', he put his main objective above any other. If your mission is, say, to destroy an enemy reactor powering a colony and it's surrounded by troops that far outnumber yours, would you consider it a lack of strategy that, against all odds, you achieved your mission? Besides, he built brilliant strategies that revolved around those little 'loopholes' that achieved victory, that basically only he could see (not even Bean saw some of them, like the final battle). Regardless of how Ender won those 'loophole' battles, he did so, and often they weren't just an easy way out, but rather the only way out.

[averagejoe]

Card didn't really retroactively change anything.

No events were retroactively changed. Bean was retroactively changed, though. It's just like,

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"So, Card, Bean is smarter than Ender?"
"Yep, that's right."
"So, when did this happen?"
"What do you mean? It's always been like that. Duh."
"But, in Ender's Game Bean was used just for small scale strategy."
"Well, yeah, but that's just so he could take over if Ender snapped."
"So, instead of commanding a relatively large force, so that he would be paying attention to and commanding a greater part of the battle, thus easing any transition that might occur if Ender snapped, he would gain a reputation among the other commanders at being worse at large scale strategy than most of them, causing potential confusion and worry at the choice?"
"... Hey, did I ever tell you about the series I wrote about a group of people returning to Earth from far away? It's good, it has lots of sex in it."

All the events can be explained without loss of continuity. But you know that isn't how Bean was written at first.

Fair writer, but hardly a genious. As the above, and in other cases, he has the tendancy to try way too hard.