If you thought that was the point of any of Card's books, then you must not have read them very carefully.

The point of Ender's Game was to explore the notion of the ideal human. Ender's shadow also addressed that topic. The adults merely represent forces beyond the protagonists' control, as most adults are in books featuring child characters.

The process of character development is one in which the children discover their own nature and the natures of those around them. The reader is intended to ask him/herself which nature is "best" and to thus view a difficult and opaque moral question with the clarity of comparing a group of friends. Quite ingenious, especially when you consider that this is a children's book. I challenge you to find a more insightful novel of ideas with equivalent appeal to the same young demographic.

> "let's make all the characters naive children who eventually realize all the adults are manipulative".

I can't agree. Speaker for the Dead (and sequels) characters have a lot of complexity in their arcs – perhaps because they're mostly not children. I'd say the Speaker series is a perfect example of how to create characters with nuance, depth and multiple motivations.

Check out 'A Memory of Earth'.

(Or better yet, don't. It, enders game, and enders shadow all did it. Three strikes and you're out imho, certainly when one of them is the book the author is known for)

Three books out of thirty.

And two of those books are the same story told from the perspective of different characters. And although that is part of the plot of those books, I don't see how you can say that's all there is to those characters. The pivotal moments in Ender's life are his acts of violence, not the adults' manipulation.

And the other isn't really about naive children realizing adults are manipulative, either — the characters just happen to be young. Volemak (the main adult in the story) actually is a good man, and the children who oppose him are the antagonists.

Seriously, I have a laundry list of complaints about Card's writing (the Homecoming series in particular), but your complaints seem pretty shallow and sound like you're levying heavy criticism without ever giving them a chance.

This particular complaint of mine is purely technical. I think that, based on three of his three book that I have read, he demonstrates a significant lack of skill when it comes to character development. Trust me, if I was going to get into nontechnical complaints, I would undoubtably be downvoted simply for creating an unreasonably long post alone.

Anyway, my time is worth too much to be scientifically rigorous. I gave him the benefit of the doubt twice already, and am not willing to do it again. And to be honest, I would suggest that anyone who thinks I somehow "missed something" in his works is giving the man far to much credit.