Messiah stories -- Ender, Bean, and Harry Potter

It's been a long time since I enjoyed stories as wild and wonderful as these. Near the end, I was unable to stop, reading aloud to my son for three or four hours in a row, having to find out how it all ended. One after the other, I had this experience with the three Harry Potter books (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets , and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J. K. Rowling) and the two Ender books where Ender is young (Ender's Game and Card Ender's Shadow by Orson Scott Card). What can I read to him next that could approach this level of intensity and excitement and sheer reading pleasure?

Strangely, the two series of books have much in common. Yes, the one is set in a fantasy world of wizards and dragons hidden behind the scenes in modern England, and the other takes place far in the future when Earth is threatened by intelligent bug-like creatures from a distant star system. But in both cases, very young boys must match wits, will, and courage with an inscrutable evil force that threatens all of mankind.

The narrative in each case has three threads -- the competition among teams of kids in an elaborate and difficult game, the kids' ongoing espionage and trying to get away with things vs. the teachers, and looming in the background, becoming more important over time, the ultimate conflict to save the world from an incredibly powerful evil force.

Most of the action takes place in a school intended to train children for challenges very different from what they've encountered before in the ordinary world. Harry and his friends must learn magical skills; Ender and Bean must learn to cope with zero-gravity outer space. Harry learning how to maneuver a flying broom bears similarities to Ender and Bean becoming accustomed to the zero gravity of the Battle Room -- learning to reorient their thinking as well as get used to the new sensations. In both cases, classroom study is also an important factor needed for success and the heroes are excellent students, with intellectual curiosity that extends far beyond the assigned work. In both cases, the central character is marked from birth as having extraordinary abilities that single him out as the possible savior of the world -- partly a matter of heredity and partly circumstance. They must also train for that role and prove themselves worthy, time and again, through intermediate struggles.

In both cases, they are leaders, not just loners, and the devoted support of other kids is essential to their ultimate victory, though the full, almost crushing burden of responsibility rests on them.

And saving the world happens by the slimmest of margins. There are twists and turns and one impossible challenge after another and one surprising revelation after another. It goes down to the wire.

The teachers think they are aware of the dangers facing the world, and keep judging, plotting, and keeping secrets, as they try to figure out which of the children might prove a savior, and they try to help him along. But, actually, the kids have to figure things out for themselves, with little or no help from the teachers. Even the most brilliant, well-meaning, and well-informed adults are just spectators in the struggle to save the world and have less insight into what is actually going on and what really matters than do the kids, who have far fewer facts to work with.

In both cases, victory depends not just on courage and skill, but also on solving the puzzle of what's really going on and coming up with brilliant tactics.

In both cases, too, preparation for the struggle to save the world -- learning their own abilities and limits and learning to work as a team with the other kids comes from dedicated practice of an elaborate, complex, physically and mentally challenging game -- a game that the kids take extremely seriously, where not only individual contests matter, but also long-term standings extending for many months. Harry Potter's game, Quidditch, is dangerous, leading to broken bones, and bringing Harry close to death several times. In contrast, Ender and Bean's Battle Room is more controlled, with no real weapons, just simulated wounding and death, by a temporary process that leaves combatants who are "hit" temporarily "frozen" until the end of the game. But Ender does kill a child -- a bully who threatened to kill him -- in a hand-to-hand fight that adults allow to happen in order to test his will.

Indeed we've come a long way from Tom Brown's School Days and Boys Town. The kids aren't just in training for the "real world". They are more intelligent and more physically capable than the adults. Childhood isn't an extended practice session, in a safe controlled environment. The fate of the world rests in their hands right now, while they are kids, engaged in deadly combat with enemies that adults would have no chance against.

And why are so many of us drawn to these books?

The fourth book of the Harry Potter series, which won't be published until summer, is already the number one best seller at Amazon.com, just from people placing advanced orders. And the other three have dominated the best seller lists, simultaneously, for many months.

Is it just that the writing -- the plain old-fashioned story-telling -- is so extraordinarily good? Or is there also a longing for a Messiah, for a chosen one, a child of more than human abilities for whom the complexities and impossible challenges facing mankind are little more than play, who, no matter how bad things get, will find a way out and save us all.

Other book reviews by Richard Seltzer

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