The Hive is the fifth book in the Formic War series of prequels leading up to Ender's Game, all of which feature Mazer Rackham, the Mauri pilot who managed to stop the "Bugger's" invasion before recruiting Ender to take the war to the enemy. Along with Mazer, there's Bing, a Chinese orphan and proto-Ender who's being groomed by both the Yin of Mazer and the Yang of a Colonel Li. Bing has his own cadre of orphan fighters, and the whole lot of them wind up at a deep space training facility where the commander won't let them train. If that seems dysfunctional, that's ok, because much of the theme of this book is a covert effort to root out incompetent officers in the International Fleet before the big fight in the next book.

I found it slow going at first, not having read the entire series, but after a bit, I warmed up to Bing and other assorted characters in parallel plot lines, enough so that I'm looking forward to the final installment, The Queens.

The danger of any prequel to a classic is that it will reframe the original work, and in doing so take away from its power. I think we all know who I'm talking about here. Hopefully, between the book and the movie, Ender's Game won't suffer that fate.