{"id":1144,"date":"2018-06-13T15:00:50","date_gmt":"2018-06-13T21:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/?p=1144"},"modified":"2018-05-28T08:34:01","modified_gmt":"2018-05-28T14:34:01","slug":"book-a-war-of-gifts-2007","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/2018\/06\/13\/book-a-war-of-gifts-2007\/","title":{"rendered":"BOOK: A War of Gifts (2007)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"AA War of Gifts
\n<\/u><\/strong>Year: 2007
\nAuthor: Orson Scott Card
\nLength: 145 minutes \/ 2.42 hours<\/p>\n

Side stories are a somewhat odd occurrence in the literary world. They\u2019re essentially like the \u201cdeleted scenes\u201d from movies: they don\u2019t add to the plot, even if they are interesting by themselves. A War of Gifts<\/em> is a side story to Ender\u2019s Game<\/a><\/em> that finds the reader back at the battle school during Ender Wiggin\u2019s training period. While Ender\u2019s Game<\/em> is a tight piece of science fiction, with no room for a Santa Claus sup-plot, A War of Gifts<\/em> does require some knowledge of the source material in order to understand this sub-plot.<\/p>\n

I am always in awe of Orson Scott Card\u2019s ability to take some of the most basic ideas and make them the most profound, most philosophically-intriguing debates. In the case of A War of Gifts<\/em>, we have a fundamentalist Christian who was taught that the more commercial aspects of Christmas (like Santa Claus, for instance) are pure evil. Butting up against this characters\u2019 beliefs are a few homesick recruits who unwittingly bring his ire upon them for celebrating a holiday in a way that might be construed as \u201creligious.\u201d The conflict comes in defining the activities that do or do not abide by the school\u2019s \u201cno religion\u201d policy.<\/p>\n

The debates of both sides are so well-described and thoroughly thought out that such a silly conflict suddenly becomes a multi-faceted problem with no easy solution. The reader also gets to see an Ender Wiggin who certainly has hints of his piercing personality that becomes present in the subsequent installments in the series. The specifics of A War of Gifts<\/em> don\u2019t lend themselves to being included in Ender\u2019s Game<\/em>, but it\u2019s a delightful visit back to the world created therein. For fans of the series, they won\u2019t be disappointed. For people who haven\u2019t read the original story, A War of Gifts<\/em> might be best saved for later.<\/p>\n

An engaging side-story in the world of Ender\u2019s Game<\/em>, I give A War of Gifts<\/em> 4.0 stars out of 5.<\/p>\n

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A War of Gifts Year: 2007 Author: Orson Scott Card Length: 145 minutes \/ 2.42 hours Side stories are a somewhat odd occurrence in the literary world. They\u2019re essentially like the \u201cdeleted scenes\u201d from movies: they don\u2019t add to the plot, even if they are interesting by themselves. A War of Gifts is a side […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,54],"tags":[176,1338,55,1339,59,554,8,1340,1341],"class_list":["post-1144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-4-0-stars","category-book","tag-176","tag-a-war-of-gifts","tag-book","tag-christmas","tag-enders-game","tag-orson-scott-card","tag-review","tag-side-story","tag-sub-plot"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1144"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1144\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1148,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1144\/revisions\/1148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}