The Worst Books Ever, Installment 2: Enders

Welcome to the second insallments of The Worst Books Ever Written! Hey, look--I made a graphic for this blog series!

Today, I'll be discussing the many literary crimes of Enders, a dystopian book by Lissa Price.

By the end of this book, my brain was short-circuiting from an overload of stupidity. Why, you ask? Oh, I’ll tell you. This should be fun:

The first book in the series, Starters, takes place in a post-world war environment. Due to a sequence of spore-infested missile strikes, the middle portion of the population (people between the ages of twenty and sixty) has died, leaving only teenagers and elderly people alive. The young people are known as Starters, and the old are dubbed Enders. Soon after the death of the middle population, a law is passed that forbids Starters from having jobs or owning property. Starters with grandparents or elderly family members move in with them, establishing a tyrannical upper class. Young people without elderly connections were forced into poverty, into a life of squatting in abandoned apartment buildings and scavenging for food. The book tells the story of Callie, a teenage girl whose purpose is to protect her ill younger brother, Tyler. In order to improve their financial situation and secure for Tyler the medical care that he needs, Callie donates herself to a company known as Prime Destinations. At Prime, a Starter can get a chip implanted in their head that allows them to donate their body to an Ender that he/she can live within for a designated amount of time, and for a hefty fee.

Anyway, Callie does this body-renting thing and discovers, just like the great dystopian female protagonists before her, that she’s different. When an Ender rents her body, she becomes in control of them, regaining control of her own body. She has to pretend she is the Ender, however, as Prime wouldn’t pay her if the customer didn’t get to spend the designated time in her body. While doing this, Callie discovers Prime Destinations’ convoluted plan t enslave Starters. And with the help of her new buddies, Callie is able to take down Prime Destinations. Whoop-dee-doo!

Oh, I almost forgot! There’s also a love triangle. Shocking, right? A dystopian novel centering around a female protagonist that can’t decide between two men? No way! *laughs at my own joke* Callie’s two lovers are Michael, her long-time friend (Ahem, Gale from The Hunger Games) and Blake, a rich Starter who she meets during her mission to destroy Prime (A.K.A. Peeta). But—plot twist! Blake turns out to be inhabited by an Ender! But not just ANY Ender—Blake was inhabited by the leader of Prime, an Ender the characters dubbed “the Old Man.”

Truthfully, Starters was actually a fun read. A FUN read, mind you, not a fulfilling or enlightening read. The ending was utterly horrifying, from a literary standpoint, but whatever—this book was not meant to be the next The Book Thief.

And then I read Enders.

In Enders, the Old Man starts talking to Callie through the chip in her head (I wish I was kidding). The Old Man bombs a mall in the city to demonstrate his power to Callie, and forces her to cooperate with him, threatening to kill Michael and Tyler. Callie is saved, however, by Hyden—the Old Man’s son! Turns out the Old Man is actually a Middle, or a person between the ages of twenty and sixty. Crazy, right! What an exemplary plot twist! (The blogger said sarcastically and with contempt). Together, Hyden and Callie start collecting Metals (people with head-chips from Prime) to protect them, utilizing them in the war against Hyden’s daddy.

And then it gets weirder.

As it turns out, Hyden has a skin condition that prevents him from coming into contact with other people. He and his mother were in his father’s lab when an experiment exploded, and his mother passed away. He was left with this condition, and spent days upon days in the lab trying to find a cure. And then he found a cure—mind-body transfer. His father, however, stole his cure and opened Prime. Yeah.

Then the Old Man steals the Metals they saved, excepting Hyden, Callie, and Michael.

Then Callie discovers that her father is still alive.

Yes, her father. She starts hearing him in her head, too. She figures this out right around the time when the Old Man starts demonstrating his power again by controlling her, which he can apparently do using her head-chip.

After Hyden, Michael, and Callie are captured by the Old Man’s competitors and escape from their clutches (long story), they deduce that the Old Man is holding Callie’s father captive at a base in the middle of the desert. On the way to save him and end the Old Man, Callie and Michael learn an interesting piece of information about Hyden: He's the Old Man. OH, NO!

Actually, he was pretending to be the Old Man in order to use Prime’s money and assets to end the law that forbade Starters from living normal lives. Ooh, plot twist. *Stares ahead contemtuously*

The only reason Lissa Price wrote in this ridiculous plot twist was to resolve the Callie-made-out-with-Blake-but-he-was-actually-the-Old-Man-that’s-gross thing. Because if Hyden was the Old Man, then Hyden was actually Blake. So it was then okay for Callie to fawn over Blake. (I mean, Hyden, I mean, the Old Man). As it turns out, Hyden entered Blake’s body for two reasons. First, to monitor Callie because she wanted to take down Prime. Second, because he fell in love with her.

Ugh.

Anyway. Turns out that the Old Man (whose real name is Brockman, by the way) is going to auction off the Metals he stole to the highest bidder, because they can all be controlled. Of course, the first Medal he decides to auction off is Callie. He demonstrates his ability to control her—and, by extension, the other Medals—by making her dance like a stripper on the auction stage. Then, he brings her father onstage and tries to make her shoot him. And like every other dystopian hero ever, Callie finds her strength and regains control of her body. Then, she uses that ability to gain control of Brockman and end the auction. And then Callie hugs her dad and YAY HAPPY ENDING.

As it turns out, the people that held Callie, Michael, and Hyden captive (you remember—the Old Man’s competitors) were actually secret government agents. They offer the three of them positions as government spies, and the book ends with the trio walking into the Transposition Research Center, where they would be trained as spies.

I'm not kidding.

What kind of ridiculous ending is that? I wanted to demand my money back for this book. Take my word for it—Enders is not worth the read.

#enders #theworstbookseverwritten