Books like Ender's Game
What should you read after Orson Scott Card’s novel? It depends on what you loved most about it.
- Orson Scott Card
- 1985
- Science fiction
What did you love about it?
Choosing one reorders everything below.
Best books to read after Ender's Game
Ranked overall. Pick what you loved above to re-rank them.
Best overall matchReady Player One
Ernest Cline
A young outsider who wins by understanding a game system more deeply than the adults running it. Cline's book is lighter and sillier, but that pleasure is the same pleasure.
- Zero-gravity battle school
- Tactics you can follow move by move
- Genius under relentless pressure
- Wall-to-wall eighties references
Best for the boy bred for a purposeDune
Frank Herbert
Paul Atreides is Ender with a longer pedigree: a child trained past the limits of childhood, handed a war, and slowly realising what has been done to him and by whom.
- A child soldier used by adults
- Genius under relentless pressure
- Empathy turned into a weapon
- Dense politics and invented vocabulary
Best for children fighting an adult warThe Hunger Games
Suzanne Collins
Collins asks Card's question from the child's side of it: what does it cost to be very good at something the adults will use you for, and can you keep yourself afterwards.
- A child soldier used by adults
- Tactics you can follow move by move
- Empathy turned into a weapon
- Young adult, first person
Best for the school that is really a warRed Rising
Pierce Brown
Brown's academy takes Battle School and removes the safety rails entirely — teenagers given armies, a valley, and no adults willing to intervene when it turns feudal.
- Zero-gravity battle school
- Tactics you can follow move by move
- Genius under relentless pressure
- Brutal, graphic violence
Worth a look — with a warningStarship Troopers
Robert A. Heinlein
The book Card was answering. Same bug war, same training pipeline, but Heinlein believes in the institution where Card is quietly appalled by it — read them as an argument.
- Zero-gravity battle school
- A child soldier used by adults
- Tactics you can follow move by move
- Long lectures on civic duty
Great matchInsignia
S.J. Kincaid
A gifted gamer is recruited, wired up and trained to fight a war fought entirely through simulation. It is Battle School rebuilt for a generation that grew up online.
- Zero-gravity battle school
- Genius under relentless pressure
- A child soldier used by adults
- Lighter, more comic in tone
Worth a look — with a warningEragon
Christopher Paolini
Recommended only for the training-montage appetite: a young nobody drilled hard by demanding mentors and pushed toward a war he did not ask for. The setting is entirely different.
- A child soldier used by adults
- Genius under relentless pressure
- Epic fantasy, not science fiction
Great matchThe Maze Runner
James Dashner
Children inside an experiment run by adults who watch, record and never explain. The observation-room chapters of Ender's Game, stretched into a whole series.
- A final test that is not a test
- Isolation used as training
- A child soldier used by adults
- Thin characters and prose
Best for the readable military science fictionOld Man's War
John Scalzi
Scalzi took the Heinlein-and-Card template and made it funny: recruits, training, alien war, and a nagging suspicion that command is not telling anyone the truth.
- Tactics you can follow move by move
- A final test that is not a test
- Zero-gravity battle school
- Recruits are seventy-five years old
Great matchThe Giver
Lois Lowry
A child singled out by his elders for a role nobody explains, given knowledge he cannot hand back. Card's moral hangover, in a book a younger reader can carry.
- Isolation used as training
- A child soldier used by adults
- Empathy turned into a weapon
- No combat, no strategy
Worth a look — with a warningBattle Royale
Koushun Takami
The nastiest answer to Card's question about what a state will do to its children, with none of the framing that lets Ender off the hook. Go in braced.
- A child soldier used by adults
- Tactics you can follow move by move
- Empathy turned into a weapon
- Extremely graphic violence
Best for more of exactly thisEnder's Shadow
Orson Scott Card
The same year at Battle School told by Bean, who works out what the adults are doing long before Ender does. A parallel novel that genuinely enriches the original.
- Zero-gravity battle school
- A final test that is not a test
- Genius under relentless pressure
- Retreads scenes you know
Great matchThe 5th Wave
Rick Yancey
Children collected by the military, trained for an alien war, and lied to about what they are actually shooting at. Yancey lifts Card's central twist and does something decent with it.
- A final test that is not a test
- A child soldier used by adults
- Isolation used as training
- Young adult with a love triangle
What should you read after Ender's Game?
Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card works on several levels at once, and which book you should read next depends on which of those levels got you. For most readers the closest match is Ready Player One by Ernest Cline — a young outsider who wins by understanding a game system more deeply than the adults running it. Cline's book is lighter and sillier, but that pleasure is the same pleasure.
If what stayed with you was a child soldier used by adults, read Dune by Frank Herbert instead: paul Atreides is Ender with a longer pedigree: a child trained past the limits of childhood, handed a war, and slowly realising what has been done to him and by whom. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins is the other strong option — collins asks Card's question from the child's side of it: what does it cost to be very good at something the adults will use you for, and can you keep yourself afterwards.
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