Ender here is around eleven or twelve years old, and if he hasn’t gone through puberty yet, he probably will soon. This is a reminder that Ender is still a kid in some ways – he may know how to kill an entire species, but he doesn’t understand sex. (Or possibly humor. He’s not a very funny kid.)

And here we have the baldest statement of the role of manipulation in this book: the school administrators had to manipulate Ender into having a set of skills and attitudes in order to reach a certain objective. (This whole section in the book is worth re-reading.) This part always makes us rethink the importance of manipulation in this book – and youth too: perhaps they needed someone young enough to be fooled.

OK, let’s get it out there: how does Mazer know that “there was no other way you could have done it”? Well, that tiny genocidal mistake to one side, Mazer shows us here how all of Ender’s wars work: there’s no such thing as a limited war with Ender – it’s all or nothing. (And usually it’s all.)