o an adult is made more
             difficult and important by the cusp of history at which the characters are
             perched. Ender's childhood is effaced only because he is needed to fight an
             impending war against the buggers. By the end of the book, he has led his
             distant army and his commanding staff of children to a total victory, and
             yet that victory in turn creates a war on earth that forever changes the
             face of global and even galactic politics. Ender sits at a preordained
             moment in time after which the world will never be quite the same. In
             preparation for the stress of this change, he is sent through a series of
             smaller radical deaths of his known world and transformation into a new
             world. For example, he is ripped from his family, and then kept
             consistently isolated at the naturally alienating battle school. There too
             he suffers radical upheaval, as every time he begins to make friends or
             find comrades he is ripped away from them and assigned to a new unit or
             task. All this is just a precursor to the historical upheaval, though, and
             his final exile from earth and from Eros (which literally means "love") as
             he is sent forth to wander the galaxy.
             Ridley also sits on a historical landmark, as for the first time the
             "1 little 1" (which we call gunpowder) is about to be synthesized and
             transform his atavistic iron age culture into something entirely new. This
             great change for him too is prefigured by a series of more manageable
             changes. His old way of life is destroyed when his father dies, for
             example, his world view turned upside down when he discovers he is "dog
             frendy" , and challenged repeatedly as one after another of those he
             These historical junctures mark the stories as more than just one's
             typical coming-of-age saga. In a very real way, both Ridley and Ender seem
             to be emblematic of something beyond themselves, and their transformations
             over the course of the story are the ...