Orson Scott Card's "Ender" series

Just finished up the last book and thought it was an excellent story..

The first book Enders Game was good it its own right. Although after reading the second book Speaker of the Dead I quickly got the feeling that Enders game has no purpose other than to set the stage for the real story, beginning in the second book. The Speaker of the Dead was one of the better stories i had read in some time. It managed to provide a page turning mystery while bringing up some heavy topics dealing with humanity. The last two books may as well have been one, but i assume it was split for publishing reasons. Xenocide and the Children of the Mind were also very good but were much less plot driven than the previous two stories. The delve into long philosophical topics with rather well balanced arguments.

If you read Enders Game and like it for the suspenseful battle scenes and the plot of the underdog rising to the top; you should stop reading there and be content. The next three books twist into a story of what defines humanity and later on self concept.