Books like Ender’s Game: 9 award-recognized picks
Ender’s Game is a story about a brilliant child, a brutal training school and a war whose real cost only becomes clear at the end. These books share its strategy, its soldiers or its moral questions.
If you read just one: Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh, because it is the closest modern match: a young soldier raised for war who starts asking what she has really been trained for.
Young soldiers and hard training
1. Some Desperate Glory
Won the Hugo Award; finalist for the Arthur C. Clarke Award (2024) ·
Raised on a militarized station to avenge a destroyed Earth, a young woman discovers the truth behind her war.
2. Starship Troopers
Won the Hugo Award (1960) ·
A recruit’s training and war in the Mobile Infantry, and a debate about duty and citizenship.
Good to know: Its politics are still argued over.
3. The Forever War
Won the Hugo, Locus and Nebula Awards (1976) ·
A soldier fights an interstellar war for centuries thanks to time dilation, and comes home a stranger.
4. Old Man's War
Finalist for the Hugo Award (2006) ·
Seventy-five-year-old recruits get new bodies and are sent to fight for Earth’s colonies.
Strategy and its cost
5. Speaker for the Dead
Won the Hugo, Locus and Nebula Awards (1987) ·
The direct sequel, set three thousand years later, in which Ender tries to make amends.
6. The Vor Game
Won the Hugo Award; finalist for the Locus Award (1991) ·
A young officer with a brilliant mind and a fragile body improvises his way through military disasters.
7. Ninefox Gambit
Finalist for the Arthur C. Clarke, Hugo and Nebula Awards (2017) ·
A captain is paired with the ghost of an undefeated, and treacherous, general.
Good to know: Dense invented terms.
8. Ancillary Justice
Won the Arthur C. Clarke, Hugo and Nebula Awards (2014) ·
A soldier who was once a warship’s AI seeks revenge on the empire she served.
9. Leviathan Wakes
Finalist for the Hugo and Locus Awards (2012) ·
A conspiracy pushes the colonized solar system toward war, seen by a ship’s officer and a detective.
How we chose
Every book in this guide won or was a finalist for at least one of the Hugo, Nebula, Locus or Arthur C. Clarke awards. Each book page lists its full award history with sources. Page counts come from English print editions and vary by edition. 9 books in all.