Shadow of the Hegemon

Rating:
Summary: Yet more philosophical storytelling from Mr. Card
Review: This book is a great, great read. It's quite different from "Ender's Shadow," much in the same way "Speaker for the Dead" was different from "Ender's Game" (Orson Scott Card says as much in his afterword.) About 30 pages into the book I could already tell it was yet another example of Card's fine philosophical storytelling.

My only disappointment in this book was finding out that there are to be two more of them -- I read the original Ender Quartet after they were already all available in paperback and was able to read them one after another. Now I have to wait!

As for the supposed continuity error pointed out by aeirould regarding Valentine's identity as Demosthenes -- Valentine and Ender traveled through space at near-light velocities, thus they arrived at their destination many years after everyone else they had ever known was dead. No one suspected that Valentine Wiggin was still alive -- and continuing to write under the pseudonym of Demosthenes. As I recall from the later Ender books, others had picked up the pseudonyms "Locke" and "Demosthenes" long after Peter the Hegemon was dead. So it's not really a continuity error -- just continuity!

Rating:
Summary: The Blander the better...Right?...Wrong!
Review: Just like he did with Xenocide and Children of the mind, Orson Scott Card lost his way. This book should've, could've been so much more, but it wasn't. Could have left the reader eager with anticipation for the next 2 in this series, but it doesn't. As a matter of fact, I cannot believe there will be another 2 books in this series. For me, this book was written about children for children. For all the research Card suggests he does for this book, I found his scenarios very basic, his strategies uninspiring and his characters absurdly flat. At no point in this book did I ever say to myself, "WOW!, what a concept" or remarked at how clever ANYTHING was. The climax is so anti-climactic that I found it improbable an editor could read it and see anything other than Card's market value, clearly not a compelling story. I found it contrived and was so disappointed by the last page that I read his afterword expecting an explanation of why he sold out, or maybe an apology. However, all I got in the afterword was Card's ignorant world views and the typical thank you's. Apparently Card believes America should let international terrorism go unchecked. I will probably read at least one of the next two books in this series because I enjoyed the characters he created in Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow, I just hope he finds them again and places them in intersting scenarios with inventive and inspiring solutions.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent, but has lapses
Review: I finally got around to reading this book, and I was not disappointed. As is usual for Card, both the plot and the characters are exceptionally well developed, and he provides plenty of places where the reader is forced to actually think and/or confront his own preconceptions on an idea. All in all, this is almost always an excellent book. Why the almost? It seemed as if Card sometimes felt the urge to get a little bit too preachy. Near the beginning of the book, a paragraph was included almost at random about how JFK wasn't really as good of a president as people thought he was. Why? It didn't seem particularly relevant to the situation at hand, so it seems likely Card just wanted to mention that idea and work it in to the book some way, any way he possibly could. Also, there was one particular plot "mystery" that Card kept building up to, only to reveal that it was one he already revealed in Ender's Shadow. It might have been necessary to the plot, but Card could have worked it in a little better and given less emphasis to the surprise factor.

Rating:
Summary: A good yarn but not masterful
Review: Like so many other readers, I loved Ender's Game. (Got a non-sci-fi friend to like Sci-Fi by starting him on this book.) And I adored Ender's Shadow. Great concept, the parallel novel, and the Rashomon style of filling in the tale was wonderful.

Now we have the logical successor to Ender's Shadow and Game; Shadow of the Hegemon. Here we learn what happens to the battle school children after they return to Earth. But the novel has too much to say in too few pages, so the character development suffers. In particular, the author attempts to develop the parents' story (The Wiggins, Delphikis and Arkanians) and fails utterly. Though we learn more about Mr. and Mrs Wiggan, we still see them as mostly cardboard and contrived. There is so much more behind their story that is simply unanswered or too lightly sketched.

Card does succeed in developing Petra into a full character, and I enjoyed getting to know her. He also plants the important "fatal flaw" into Bean's character so we can empathize with his inevitable tragedy. Bean, manipulating, coldly calculating and not even fully human develops into a more human hero.

While I think this book suffers from what I like to call "mid trilogy" or "mid-tetrology" weakness (see Dune Messiah of the Dune series for another example of this kind of weakness) I still enjoyed it. I really am glad Orson Scott Card will continue the tale for the fourth book of the Ender series and I can't wait for it!

Rating:
Summary: Contrived plot, unrealistic characters, unworthy of Card
Review: I first read Ender's Game, the short story, about 15 years ago. It was a masterpiece. The tight story grabbed me with the descriptions of battle school. I felt Ender's stress during combat school, and was as confused as he was about Mazer's motivations. When the suprise ending hit, I was genuinely startled, and immediately reread the entire story. I loved Ender's Game.

Shadow of the Hegemon is the opposite in almost every way.

The plot, briefly, is that the Formic War is over. The graduates of battle school are a highly prized commodity by the petty nations of Earth. Achilles, the cartoonish supervillian child from Ender's Shadow, is hatching a plan to kidnap the battle school grads and thus take over the world. Only Bean, cartoonish supergenius that he is, has any chance of stopping Achilles. He seeks an unlikely ally in Peter Wiggin, Ender's older and vindictive older brother.

The first problem is that the reader can't truly sypathize with any of the characters. Bean has the best chance, but the unbelieveable intelligence that alienates him from other characters alienates him from us, too. Peter has already been established as a cold and violent person, and no amount of backpeddling can get us to forget that. The other characters are worse still--in fact, when one of Bean's friends dies, I wasn't saddened so much as I was relieved that I wouldn't have to read any more strained dialogue between the two.

The second problem: Robert Burns once wrote "The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry," but Card apparently thinks this cannot apply to graduates of battle school. The children can come up with a ridiculous plan, one which requires every participant to behave according to a preposterous script, and the plan will succeed every time. I can accept that the children are military geniuses, but I need for the genius to be believable. The characters appear smart only because Card has them never fail.

The last major problem is that the war is not directly described so much as it is relayed to us by dialogue between characters. Card uses this as a way to have the characters spout philosophy regarding war and their role in it. This could be interesting, but in this book, it's just preachy.

I wasn't sure if I should give this book three stars (which I consider the lowest book I'd recommend) or two. But in the last week, I reread two of Card's short stories, "Unaccompanies Sonata" and "A Thousand Deaths". These short stories are works of art. Card can do great things, but Shadow of the Hegemon is below him, so I cannot recommend it.

Rating:
Summary: Bean's coming into humanity
Review: You know what, I just want a mini-tirade to begin: Orson Scott Card's novels shouldn't be shelved in a sci-fi/fantasy ghetto -- in fact, I don't believe there should be such genre Balkanization at all. Card's presence has improved character development and storytelling in sci-fi/fantasy, but I think American fiction on the whole could use that help.

Now to the real review:

This novel is the perfect follow-up to Ender's Shadow, showing the further development of Bean's character and his coming into humanity -- he is still the calculating machine of the earlier novel, but he now allows himself to have genuine human attachments, not just the calculated relationships of Rotterdam and Battle School.

However, to have the full emotional impact, one must read the first novel first (people may find this to be a truism in a novel series, but there have been several series that I have managed to read not only out of order but in reverse order without losing what is necessary to follow the action or characters). In many ways, Card is an adept at playing on emotions - as Petra notes at one point, one can know an author is deliberately setting you up for a particular emotional response in a very blatant way, and still not be able to prevent that response. I was in tears twice during this novel, even knowing what was looming ahead.

Orson Scott Card admits that his original idea for this book ended up getting split into two novels, and perhaps I would have been impatient had he decided to fuse what will now be two novels into one really long one (not impatient because I can't handle the length - my favorite books are all over 700 pages long - but because he would've published later). But I think I could have withstood the wait! I hate it when he finishes his novels in the middle. The post-Ender's Game trilogy irritated me in that very way. I understand that he does better than many authors in staying true to reality, and in that way one can't expect all ties to be neatly gathered at the end, but for crying out loud this is fiction, and I need more resolution than Peter getting to be Hegemon at the end! (I'm not giving anything away plot-wise really because: 1) Orson Scott Card's novels are almost never about plot but about character development 2) Anyone who has read the Ender's Game books know that Peter ends as Hegemon eventually anyway.)

Card has been very smart in these books, Ender's Shadow and Shadow of the Hegemon, for he always leaves a big hole for one to peer into and wonder: What is happening in there? People may have seen Achilles' escape at the end of Ender's Shadow as an obvious ploy to a sequel (which it was), but I found the disclosure of Bean's probable future physical development to be even more intriguing -- how long does Bean have to live? What will he accomplish before he dies? This question remains open at the end of Shadow of the Hegemon, and one knows this will hang until the 4th book - or 5th if Card ends up splitting up another novel.

For the sake of the reader, Card, please don't split another novel! Just make an extra-long one! If kids can handle a 700 page Harry Potter book, Card fans can handle an 800-page Bean book! Argh!

Rating:
Summary: REALLY GOOD BETTER THEN I EXPECTED
Review: I just got done with SotH and it is great. I would consider it just a little under EG. The plot, charecters and everything else about it is great. If you like sci-fi, buy this book.

Rating:
Summary: Good, but not Great
Review: I can't say I was disappointed in the continuation of Bean's story from Ender's Shadow (which I thought was great) but it was a bit flat.

First the praise. Card does an excellent job in characterization and that is the main strength of the book. The reader familiar with the previous novel will learn new and important things about each main charcter: Bean, Petra, Peter, Achilles and Sister Carlotta. We even get a deeper understanding of the more peripheral characters in the novel, such as Ender's parents. And they are all, very, very interesting characters.

I was troubled a bit by the plot. I think partially because I made the mistake of reading an online "chat" with Orson Scott Card on... , where he came across in some answers as a bit snobbish about his religion and not very forthcoming about some of his other points of view on issues. That's his prerogative, but I found his dismissiveness annoying. Secondly, I read the afterward before reading the book and didn't much agree with what he had to say there about America (or in the online chat) quickly becoming a marginal player in world affairs. I do agree with many of his criticims of the US, but I find it highly unlikely that the US will be marginalized so quickly. I'm saying this simply to state I had some biases before I start the book.

Nevertheless, the plot is thin and there's little reasonable or rational reason why Achille's or Peter could pull the strings of world powers so easily. I need more convincing than what Card offers, which is extremely little. Second, I still don't like the easy way he sweeps nuclear weapons under the rug using the IF. And finally, that the Western hemisphere is a non-player in the whole the shebang.

Basically, I don't think the plot that plausible and the author doesn't do enough to convince me.

BTW, I was also maybe put off a bit because there are corrections to the novel posted on Card's official website at ...

Rating:
Summary: Me caveman book critic
Review: Shadow. What that? Me chase horse, make picture on cave. Now need fire. Book make good fire. What everyone mean, "eletricity"?

Book not good to eat with. Only for throw at horse, make ready to eat. When it be warm again?

Rating:
Summary: Card gets it right
Review: Although I found the sequels to Ender's Game rather disappointing, these last two novels spun off correlating with Bean and Ender's adventures at Battle School and his rise to power were surprisingly well written and very interesting. Like the other reviews I could not put the book down. The plot was thick and nail-biting and the story left off perfectly for the next book. I am eagerly looking forward to the two following this novel.