Rating: 
Summary: Very Clever
Review: This book is full of non stop suspense and political action. Another great addition to the Ender series by Orson Scott Card. As predicted in earlier books, all the children from the battle school were kidnapped by some government with hope of controlling the world with the powerful generals that won the war against the buggers. All except for Julain Delphiki (Bean), and his brother, the less important Nikolai, who narrowly miss being killed in a bonbing of his house with the Delphiki family. Bean realises at once who it wmust be, an occupant of the town where he grew up and a Battle School late arrival, Achilles (AH sheels). The Belgian boy Achilles is found to have made a pact with the Russian goverment and has control over the whole area. As Bean identifies and enlists the help of the famed Locke and Demosthenes, who is Enders Brother, Peter, he has to stop Achilles and the Russians from taking over the world. Using Peter's knack for persuasion and his mastermind, he forces Achilles out of Russia, freeing all but one of the Battle School Captives, Petra. In the Battle school, Petra was one of Ender's jeesh, along with Bean and other memebers of the battle school. Bean tries to free her, but Achilles quickly enlists her as a tactician for his new country, India. Bean must stop Achilles from taking over the world before its too late. All though there were a few errors, no one is perfect, so this is worth 5 stars anyway.
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: Maxed-out on Politics
Review: Shadow of the Hegamon is deffinately one of the weaker books in the Ender series- Xenocide being the other weak one in my opinion. Card delves so deeply into speculative politics that I had to read passages three or four times to understand the character's supersonic train of thought. The development of Petra was enjoyable, as she had been semi ignored in the other books, but the changes in Bean and Achilles I found disturbing. While the book is clearly the work of a geinus-too much so for me- it lacks the something that made Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow so special for me.
Rating:
Summary: Better the Ender's Shadow and more human
Review: I enjoyed the exploration of Petra's character in this book. Many of the other characters had been ignored from the original Ender's Game, partly because he was so isolated from the rest of the battle school. Shadow of the Hegemon has a much wider scope than the previous book, dealing with the politic of the countries that Ender has left behind. We learn the events that lead to Peter being Hegemon. Card's handling of politics between countries makes the book engaging, as it revolves around a kidnaping of Petra by Achilles and Bean efforts to save her. We even get to see what Battle school graduates are doing after Battle school. They are at the heart of military strategies in the book, sometimes to the chagrin of adults. It you truly believe in the child geniuses being brilliant strategizers then the books work. People who have read Ender's Game and accepted a six year old killing another bully of a six year old seem surprised with the maturity of battle school graduates. The whole point was to make them grow up faster and draw out strategies for war. It stands to reason that they could plan wars on planets or space since their training would have started with the history of wars on Earth and then branched out into space. Bean is more human in this book. He shows more emotion for people and he interacts more with his environment. Peter's role in this book was surprisingly small, but he is sure sure to play a larger role in the future books. It is well worth the read. It continues in the Ender tradition, but it 100% new events as opposed to Ender's Shadow.
Rating:
Summary: Card is a science fiction genius!
Review: Ever since reading Ender's Game, I have been mesermized by Card's style. I immediately purchased Ender's Shadow, and loved it just as much, perhaps even more. Then I saw this book. It was just another sequel. However, I loved it. It was truly brilliant. The storyline is exciting, the characters are thorough, everything is compelling. I don't recommend readin this book if you haven't yet read Ender's Shadow, as it is somewhat a sequel to this book, more so than any other book in the Ender Saga. All in all, a terrific read. Any science fiction fan would love it. Any Orson Scott Card fan would die for it =).
Rating:
Summary: Almost as great as it's prequels!
Review: I must admit, I had no idea this book was about Bean until I picked it up and saw that it resembled 'Ender's Shadow'. I like how Orson Scott Card took the original 'Ender's Game' and split what happens after that into two seperate series, one for Ender as the Speaker for the Dead, and one for Bean on earth. Although I like action stories (and movies) opposed to psychological, the Ender (and Bean) series is so great becuase of the required thinking to make it through any of the books. It dissapointed me however, when within the first ten pages of the story, Bean and Nikolai were running away from missiles. I thought it was very cheezy when the Delphiki family just came up with the solution to the missing children sitting around the breakfast table in less than five minutes. This didn't require the reader to think about what or who might really be behind it. Although it wasn't as long, and the reader didn't have to be involved or using their brain much... It still had all the elements of the first two. Card has created a world of the future, complete with it's own political system. But at the end of 'Ender's Shadow' everyone was wondering, 'What happens to Bean?'. The other books were awesome... 'Shadow of the Hegemon just put the icing on the cake."
Rating: 
Summary: Poor; Card loses focus
Review: In Ender's Game, a masterwork, Card invents three highly memorable characters: Ender Wiggin, and his siblings, Valentine and Peter. In Ender's Shadow, Card takes a relatively minor character, Bean, and gives us a new focus on Ender. It works reasonably well because we love Ender. Bean would probably not be worth writing about himself. Yet, Card insists on doing so in Shadow of the Hegemon. Bean dominates, along with Petra and Achilles, two characters we could, frankly, care less about. They are cardboard cut outs. Peter, Peter, is the character we want to see, now that Valentine and Ender are out of the picture. Yet we see little of him. The book lurches suddenly to life, albeit briefly, when an adolescent Peter slides into a seat beside Bean and his mentor, Carlotta. The momentum is too soon lost. Card reveals in the epilogue that he allowed the Petra/Achilles storyline to capture him, and postpone the Peter/Bean interaction to another book. Our loss, and our waste of money. The book is a shadow, and no Hegemon.
Rating:
Summary: bean.
Review: Hello my friends. The problems I am having with Ender's Shadow and Shadow of the Hegemon: 1. Bean is Ender. They are very much the same. It's as though Card, realizing he wanted to write about a young Ender again, and realizing that he couldn't, just went back and changed Bean to fit Ender. 2. Achilles is a terrible plot device; his origins in Ender's Shadow were poor, contrived work, and his continued existence reminds me of nothing more than the sad but inevitable prevalence of Jar Jar Binks in the next two Star Wars films. 3. Much of the efforts to make this a "historical novel" on Card's part, though interesting--the SF novel as historical novel from the future is a great idea--fall short, as multiple references to the twentieth century do a great deal to show the time the book was actually written. This is not a major failing, and depending on the precise year, given the 100-year "freeze" on international development during the Formic War--but it's still very noticeable, unfortunately. 4. I do not quite understand the emphasis Mr. Card places on the religious side of these characters: however, at times I feel as though Mr. Card does not have as full an understanding of traditional Christian doctrine as one might hope, since one of the main characters is a nun: at times he appears to mix LDS beliefs about such trivia as salvation by works under the guise of Catholicism. With that said. Here are the good things: We like this tone, this Ender's Game tone that disappeared in Speaker, Xenocide, Children (although they are all great books in different ways). We like these characters, we like the kid-geniuses, even though the third time through the device is starting to show wear, starting to feel a bit hackneyed. All told: this books is an interesting and excellent read that lets us join Bean and company as they outsmart their enemies, even their smartest enemies. This is joy, and our heroes are good. I like Bean. I like Petra. I like reading about how good they are doing, and although I find Achilles unconvincing and the end of the book basically contrived in order to continue the series--as if Achilles would really be a major contender, or would be the only thing stopping Peter from taking over... I would like to read more about Peter and have a closer study of his character: something deeper than has been presented here, which seems to be a relatively simple desire for his parents to be as proud as him as they are for Ender (and this feels true, this is a good characterization but mightn't there be more to it?). Thank you. .... .... It is a good read. It is a good book; it took me five or six hours.
Rating:
Summary: It's another "Ender" book; weaker than most...
Review: It suffers from a bit of lack of focus; the point of it is _strongly_ tied to "shadowing," as we see: - Ender, on his way out of the solar system; - Peter, never quite actually attaining influence, even though this would _seem_ to be a book about him; - Bean, showing ongoing "flawed-but-nonetheless extreme" brilliance, as most nearly the main character, behind... - Achilles, the villain that apparently must be just as brilliant as the others. As the book nears its climax, it was most fascinating to see it focus not on some traditional "First World" geographic location, but rather Hyderabad, India, a city I had recently visited for the first time. (It is described as a major Indian Army site; the nearest I can find to confirm such is that there was considerable conflict there in around 1948.) The book tries a little too hard to evoke sympathy for the characterizations of too many characters; a bit more concentration would probably have been better. The other unfortunate thing is that the book draws to a climax right near the end, and the "dissonant resolution" shows that this is only a temporary resolution that MUST be followed by another book in the series. It's fine to leave the third movement of a concerto unresolved when the orchestra will immediately raise their instruments to bring on a resolving fourth movement. It's not so fine when the resolution involves waiting a year (or so) to get another book.
Rating:
Summary: Don't have time for a full review, but...
Review: I don't really have time to write a review, but I wanted to make sure that I add my full five stars into the book's average. If you read no other books in your life, you should read this (and its prequel, and the original Ender's Game). Everything by Card is top notch, but in this book he goes beyond just top notch into amazing. I couldn't find a single fault with it, and I read the whole thing in only 2 days. All the characters are superb, and the fact that Bean has a major crush on Petra doesn't even bother me, it's written so well :-). Card, I have one word to say to you: "Wow."
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