Rating: 
Summary: Good story, but the Wiggin stuff isn't.
Review: All that stuff about Peter Wiggin getting the world by the tail by posting on the Internet. It's just stupid.
What would really happen is Peter would post something, then scores if blowhard nitwits would excoriate him and call his mother a female dog fertilized by a chicken.
Nobody would take it seriously at all except the stupid people posting, like Peter, but lots of typing would happen.
Rating: 
Summary: Simple thriller lacks depth of previous books
Review: I ADORED Ender's game. But I loved Speaker for the Dead and Xeonocide even more. I read them both in three days, because the ideas and characters were fascinating to me. I read Ender's Shadow eagerly, and loved revisiting Battle School with Bean, who I quickly fell in love with as an intriguing character. And I was beyond excited when ANOTHER book in the Ender series came out. But I have to admit that this book lacks what Card does best: smart, intriguing development of character. Sure, we've got a good guy (Bean the Brilliant Ambitionless Mutant) pitted against a bad guy (Achilles the Psychopathic Power-Hungry Monster), and desperate world circumstances, but this book lacks heart. When Bean's vaction home is blown up, there is no commentary about how it would feel to be separated from your parents with a monster trying to kill you. When his surrogate mother is killed, there are maybe two sentences on his grief. When the awful truth of what he really is comes out, Bean barely notices it. Moments that have been built up to since Ender's Game fall flat. There is little emotional intensity to this book, and finally the detailed "guesses" and leaps of intuition made are confusing and unbelievable. I wish Card had spent a little more time on the relationships between his characters and their growth as people, and a little less time on the uninteresting, fictional world stage. But if you're an Ender fan, I still recommend the book. For me, just reading about the characters I loved originally is enough. But don't buy this book in hardback. And if you can, wait till it's at the library.
Rating:
Summary: As expected, nothing new
Review: I am sure that I am not the only one that suspects that Card wrote Ender's Shadow to take one final squeeze out of the cash cow that is Ender's Game. How fitting the book is called Ender's Shadow, because it IS the same story, the same characters, only paler in comparison. Bean is an interesting character and perhaps Card should have expounded more on the other battle school kids earlier, but to retrofit the story this way is just plain unnecessary. It lacks the newness, uniqueness, and ultimately - the surprise ending of the original. Most of the book is rehashing the same events of EG, but with a seething, gnashing jealous, yet superior, Bean in the background. With the help of Sister Carlotta, he does redeem himself from being a soulless, arrogant Napoleonic runt, though not by much. What is next? We will find out that it was Petra - the real uber supremo genius, not Bean, not Ender - who won the war? What is new: modern technology that justifies Bean's abnormal genius traits. There is one particular scene that some may find ludicrous involving Bean's miraculous feats of survival whilst in diapers. This first book is insubstantial, but I do recommended giving it a run anyway, as the rest of the series takes an arc that a lot of Ender fans were yearning for - the first couple of years post Battle School. The tale takes on mythic proportions as the young prodigies assume leadership of various nations and battle for control of Earth - against an arch nemesis named, quite suitably, "Achilles". It is less sci-fi and more speculative political drama with a dose of Card's singular use of child heroes.
Rating: 
Summary: This was absolutely amazing
Review: I can't recomend this book enough if you liked the first one!
Rating:
Summary: Best of Sci-Fi
Review: I enjoyed Children of the Mind very much. In this book you can see the aftermath of the Bugger Wars. You can see a better look at Bean,Petra, and Achilles. These main characters were always my favorite and I feel Mr.Card did a very good job exploring these characters more. You have Bean, the super genius child. You have Achilles the teenage criminal mastermind out for blood and to rule the world by harnesting the top battleschool alumni children. And you have Petra the damsel in distress that's capable of taking care of herself using her mind, skill, and even charm. Put these three characters together with other interesting people, future bamboozled political situations, and lots of guns, brains, and Orson Scott Card and you have a book that is garenteed to keep you on the edge of your seat, never wanting to put it down.
Rating:
Summary: All is perfect,except one thing
Review: I have read through other 2 books in the Ender's series including Ender's Game and the Speaker for the Dead. Though it's really a pity that I didn't cover Ender's Shadow,I am still quite like this book,because Card's plot is just unresistable. You can never predict what is going on next. Also I like Card's feature of beginning every chapter with a small passage (emails, most times), they give you small hints or brief accounts of what is happening. It IS really a perfect book if there is not that thing. And that's why I didn't give it a full mark. As a Chinese, I cannot accept the fact that Achilles ended up going to China and that China appears in the book as an evil country. I think Russian peaple will get the same feeling when they saw Mother Russia be described as a country which would destroy the peace of the world for its own privilege. I believe China would never do such evil things.
Rating:
Summary: A brilliant followup to Ender's Shadow.
Review: If you were a fan of Ender's Shadow, you will undoubtedly enjoy this book as much as I did as a fantastic sequel.
This sequel fills in much of the gaps whereas the Ender's Series concentrated primarily on what happened to humanity in outer space. Ender's Shadow and the books that procede it concentrate on the struggle for humanity to unite under one ruler in Shadow of the Hegemon.
This book was great as it tells you what happens on Earth while Ender is busy helping humanity colonize "The Hundred World's".
Card adds a bit of refreshing insight into the life of another hero, Bean and adds another interesting perspective on the Ender story with the story of what happened after Ender left Earth.
If you haven't read this book, I highly recommend that you don't miss out for much longer!
Rating:
Summary: A book that succeeds in spite of its flaws
Review: It's rare for me to only give a Orson Scott Card book three stars, but Card seems to have really stumbled with this one. Although the book is very entertaining, it also has some very serious flaws. One major problem with Shadow of the Hegemon (and the one that I found to be the most bizarre) is that it doesn't really appear to be set in the future. Card never tells us exactly what year it's supposed to be, but we know that humanity has spent several generations fighting a major interstellar war, we've built fleets of starships with weapons capable of destroying entire planets, and we've unlocked the secrets of faster-than-light communication. Yet for some reason, virtually all of the technology - military and otherwise - in Shadow of the Hegemon seems to be from only a few years in the future. People are still flying around in helicopters, shooting gunpowder machine guns at each other, and generally living their lives and fighting in the way one would expect two or three years from now. The world's geo-political situation is also largely unchanged, with most of the world's nations characterized by political stereotypes from today. Although this in itself doesn't really ruin the book, it's all jarringly incongruous with the previous books in the series. A second, more fundamental problem has to do with the way in which the main characters in the story interact with their world. The battle school children seem more like forces of nature than actual characters. They seem to be so far above the rest of humanity that they come to dominate everyone and everything they come into contact with, despite that fact that most of them are small children. The entire world seems to bend itself to their will, and they alone are able to successfully oppose each other. Of course Ender's character had that sort of importance in 'Ender's Game,' but there was also an elaborate backstory to explain how a single child came to have such an important role in deciding the fate of humanity. In 'Shadow of the Hegemon' it seems that Card again wanted to make his child characters pivotally important, but he never really comes up with a credible explanation for how any group of people - no matter how brilliant or well trained - could end up so incredibly influential in world affairs. Despite all that, 'Shadow of the Hegemon' is still a very entertaining book. The plot is quite entertaining in spite of its problems with consistency and believability, and the action proceeds at a brisk pace. Although Card seems to give his battle school children far more credit than plausibility allows, they're all quite fascinating and well-developed characters. It's genuinely interesting to watch Bean, Petra, Achilles, and company spar with each other for world domination. Even with its flaws, Shadow of the Hegemon is still better than most of what you'll find on bookstore shelves.
Rating:
Summary: Card Wanders Off the Beaten Path
Review: Orsen Scott Card has delivered another supurb novel, although he has change his genre. However, he has still managed to keep that same moral delimma/smart children style. Card's first book of the Ender quartet, Ender's Game, was a great hit. His combination of genius children, evil I.F. leaders, and space combat made a book that would make you think, but still be a fun read. The second book of the quartet, Speaker for the Dead, took a gigantic leap from action to science/discovery; and yet, for how much it changed, it still had the same feel to it and was very enjoyable to read. After completing his last two books(Xenocide and Children of the Mind)he took another huge leap and created a parallel story: the story of Ender's right hand man. Ender's Shadow(the story of Bean) was quite an origanal novel, even though it was a parallel to Ender's Game. It was a great book, and just begged for a sequel. Card, most likely knowing that he most likely could not create another like it, chose to write a more political book, instead. He titled his book Shadow of the Hegemon. His book focused on a world about to be torn apart by war. Russia has aquired Aqullies, a psychotic teenager with a hungry need for power. Ender's jeesh are starting to disappear and China is starting to again look like a super-power. Indian's and Thai play a huge role as well. This book is a must buy. Its political and moral dilemmas have again succeded in making this book an "On-the-edge-of-your-seat-thriller". Buy it!
Rating:
Summary: Good psychology
Review: Orson Scott Card has a large following (see the many reviews of his books). This is well-deserved. The Ender saga is probably his most famous endeavor. However, IMHO this 6th volume is not as engaging as some of the others in the series as far as pure science fiction goes. On the other hand, Card embeds his works with gems of psychological commentary on humans and how they think, act, etc. These are brilliant. As a collector of quotes, my favorites from this book are:
p. 58: What a laugh, though. To think that one human being could ever really know another. You could get used to each other, get so habituated that you could speak their words right along with them, but you never know why other people said what they said or did what they did, because they never even knew themselves. Nobody understands anybody.
p. 81: You don't have to eat the entire turd to know that it's not a crab cake.
p. 111: Most victories come from instantly exploiting your enemy's stupid mistakes, and not from any brilliance in your own plan.
p. 138: It isn't lying to tell a bureaucrat whatever story it takes to get him to do his job properly...If he does his job properly, he'll understand the purpose of the rules and therefore know when it is appropriate to make exceptions.
p. 153: Whether you trust somebody or distrust him has a lot more to do with the kind of person you are than the kind of person he is.
p. 322: Satyagraha-The willingness to endure great personal suffering in order to do what's right...What matters is that you do not hide from the consequences. You bear what must be borne.
It's worth the read just to hear his insights.
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