Ender's Game- Book Review

I just recently finished reading the book, Ender's Game (The Ender Quintet), by Orson Scott Card.  I usually like to read the book before I see a movie version.  This time I wasn't all that interested from the previews, but my husband asked me to order the book from the library.  It showed up and he started reading it.  One day, while in the bathroom, let's say... brushing my teeth, I picked up the book that he had left there.  I immediately got hooked into the story.  It starts immediately with the adults talking to each other and just giving you a taste of what the overarching story is.  Then it goes into Ender's side of the story in much greater detail.  Ender is a lovable character, chosen for his abilities, and you right at the very beginning that his journey is going to be lonely and painful.  The adults in charge of his life are going to purposefully manipulate his environment so that it will be so.  The book follows his journey as he goes to Battle School to undergo extraordinarily rigorous battle training for such a young boy.  The children at the school are being trained to be able to fight the "Buggers" an alien race that has attacked Earth twice before.
I am glad that I read the book before seeing the movie.  I don't know how they could possibly pick up the moral struggles that Ender, as well as his sister and his brother go through.  The action in the book keeps you turning pages, but it also endears you to the characters.  The ending of the book itself was a little long, and it appears to be written to set you up for the next couple of books in the series, which I shall be reading and will review here as well.  While the very ending might have been slow, the third quarter of the book had me literally shaking my head, and saying, "Aah...." out loud.  Generally I have a good idea of what the "twist" in a book will be, and I am usually on to the author long before the big reveal.  But this book kept surprising me.  Last Sunday I meant to read only a couple more pages and ended up reading until the end, it kept me riveted for 6 straight hours.  I highly recommend picking up this rather quick read before hitting the theaters.