Ender's Shadow

Rating:
Summary: A shadow which overtakes the original
Review: If you ever intend to read =Ender's Game=, make sure you do before reading this book. First of all, the "secrets" of the first novel are given away, and thus lessen the impact of surprise one gets on first reading =Ender's Game=. Secondly, the characterization and plotting in =Ender's Shadow= surpasses the original novel; a lot of time has passed since Card wrote his wildly popular book, and he has used his intervening time well in improving his craft as a storyteller.

Like =Ender's Game=, =Ender's Shadow= is a story about an execeptional child trying to fit in and succeed, in which the child has a nemesis who haunts his thoughts, and an advocate who seems to betray him. Upon multiple readings of both novels, more and more parallels pop out; however, I find the characters of Ender and Bean to be extremely different. Ender seems to sink further and further inside himself, as he tries to protect himself from the dangers which threaten him from outside; Bean starts as a cold, survival machine, remnant of his battles to stay alive on the streets of Rotterdam as a toddler, but as he moves on he reaches out to protect himself from his own external dangers. As Ender becomes more obsessed with the Buggers, Bean keeps thinking about the wider world, and the inevitable wars on Earth that would result from defeating the Buggers. At the end of the novel, Ender is about to leave Earth forever, to start on his long journey away from humanity as =Speaker for the Dead=; Bean returns to Earth to a new family and a new sense of purpose and humanity.

It does not matter that one knows what happens in =Ender's Game=; Card realized that Ender's point of view on Battle School and the world as a whole was extremely myopic. One finds new significance to dialogues between Ender and Bean, knowing the limitations both have in knowledge of the other. I'm glad Card revisited the story of Ender and has extended it to the period on Earth right after the Bugger War, which was glossed over in the Ender series. Bean's series continues with =Shadow of the Hegemon=, and the parallel stories have ended. If nothing else, one can note the maturation of Card as an author in the time between =Ender's Game= and =Ender's Shadow=, with more complex characterization and a sharper contrast of good vs. evil, =Ender's Shadow= definitely comes out on top.

Rating:
Summary: Bean keeps the story together
Review: I read Ender's game about a year ago-I was bored, and it was all a friend had to offer. It was great. I loved it. IO finished it in a day and then left it. Until I was on Amazon.com and I saw this. I read some reviews, and since Bean was always my fave character, I bought it. Not only is this book the most realistic sci-fi book I've ever read, it is also touching and very adventurous. It tells the story of Bean, who was two and suffering on the streets of Roterdam before the brilliance in him emerged and he managed to civilize a whole city before his utter brilliance was noticed. And at four, he was recruited as the youngest to be going to battle school, earning top maeks on the tests that other kids took when they were six.

I finished the book in two hours. It was amazing. Bean is among the most amazing literary figures ever created, among Crime and Punishment's Roskalnikov and Dracula's Count Dracula. He is a character that simply will not let go of your mind. I walked around my house, entranced, with the book glued to my nose.

This book has gotten a pretty bad rep. They're saying Card was just trying to make money off of Ender's Game, the original. I disagree. In fact, I think this book was the better of the two books. Bean was less compassionate, and he didn't act all sappy towards anyone during the whole book like Ender did toward Valentine. Bean was also much more perceptive and intelligent, and he figured out the obvious in the end - but you'll have to read that for yourself.

Not that Bean was the only great character in Shadow. card offered a much more detailed psycho-analysis of Ender through Bean's eyes and also of Bonzo Madrid, commander of Salamander Army and Enders nemesis. It developed the character Nikolai, Bean's only true friend, much better than in Ender's Game, in which Ender saw him merely as another soldier. I'm sorry that Card didn't get Bean to get along very well with Petra or Alai (Ender's other good friends), because it wouldn't have made him look like such a hard-to-get-along-with young boy. Besides that, all the characters were very well analyzed.

If you need a good read, even if you hate sci-fi (I did before Ender's Game, definitly pick up Ender's game. TRhen move on to this book. Even though Card says in his intro that Shadow was made to stand alone, I read Ender's Game again after reading Shadow, and for the full effect I highly recommend reading Ender's Game first.

The only weird thing about this book is the countereffect it has on the reader's impression of Ender's Game. Instead of giving the credit (where credit is due) entirely to Ender Wiggin for defeating the bugger race, all of a sudden we are asked to believe that Bean was the "brains" behind the operation. Obiously, Bean is a great mind, perhaps much greater than Ender, but it casts a shadow on the whole effect of the trilogy to downplay Endeer Wiggin's heroic antics.

It made it unfair that they kept insinuating that Bean should have been commander, Bean is better, the teachers are fighting over him, he writes better papers. Ender is without a doubt the right choice and the book was good enough without making Bean into this super tactician, better than Ender? Ender is the commander, that's that.

Even though Bean is better.

Rating:
Summary: Great Book, but Ender isn't as great as we thought
Review: One thing we learn is that Bean isn't as human as the rest of us. That is bad part about his character, we can't relate enought to him. Ender was the bright child in us all, I know most of my class (I read it in 9th grade GT English) felt like they were Ender. I didn't get as Emotionally wrapped up in Bean.

Bean accomplishments felt like they were taking away from the original book. Everything he did at battle school made Ender less brilliant and, at times, even more miserable. I went back and read Ender's Game to see what my impression were from both sides of the story.

The book is written extremely well though. Card creates an interesting look into the other countries of the world. I love the Sister in her endearing efforts to save Bean. Their dialogue made the book engaging (as well as her dialogue with the Colonel). Writing from her perspective seem better that that of the rest of the ender series (Xeno, Mind, etc). I feel like I can see Card's writing improving.

The book really was well written, but there is a lack of emotional connection.

Rating:
Summary: Best Ender Yet
Review: This book was one of the best yet. Good plot and catches your attention quickly. Easy to follow yet keeps you hooked. Lots of suspense and action, with mystery mixed in. Wonderful book.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent re-examination of Ender's Game
Review: Ender's Shadow is exactly as the name implies: the identical, yet different, counter-entity of Ender that is Bean. Bean is in many ways Ender's superior, yet mature enough beyond his years to know who is the key to humanity's future (namely, Ender).

Without giving away too much of the book, it is basically the story of Bean, barely rising off the streets of Rotterdam, and making his way to Battle School a little behind Ender, but quickly catching up to be Ender's "second." The story is well written, and gives a new twist to many of the same scenarios from the original Ender's Game, with many of the same characters, as seen from another's point of view.

By far, the first half of the story was the best. Showing Bean single-mindedly raise himself off the streets, using just his amazingly superior wit, is a brilliant piece of writing. Getting into Battle School, using every tiny scrap to his advantage in ways others could not even dream about. Bean was the perfect "robot."

The rest of the story is still good, but in many ways, seems almost "cut too much," as if this was a movie and the director realized a two hour movie was fast becoming a four hour epic at the pace it was going. Card was obviously trying to humanize Bean, but in many ways, this tended to clash with the Bean we learned of in the first half of the book.

Still, it was well worth reading, especially if you are a Card fan, and specifically an Ender's Game fan.

Now if only Card would write the story of the First and Second Formic Wars....

Rating:
Summary: Human Bean
Review: If names like "Ender" and "Battle School" don't already excite you and bring back memories of a powerful, touching, and exciting novel, then a title like ENDER'S SHADOW is unlikely to evoke much, either. For you who have already enjoyed ENDER'S GAME, don't waste time with reviews, just order the book already. It shares those same qualities that made ENDER'S GAME so riveting and so endearing.

But, ENDER'S SHADOW stands on its own. It needs no other book to introduce its universe. If you have read neither book yet, this one provides a different, but equally moving entre to the ENDERverse. It, too, is the story of a precocious child, picked on and threatened by peers and adults. It is the story of learning and overcoming, not just external challenges, but also internal threats.

During much of the book, Bean, the protagonist, kept reminding me of Okonkwo, the hero of Achebe's THINGS FALL APART (also a very worthy read), trying to use personal achievement to weave himself into community. But, Card moves Bean beyond this, and develops his character in unexpected ways.

I devoured this book in two days. My thireen-year-old son beat me to it by months. He had already read ENDER'S GAME and kept hounding me to read ENDER'S SHADOW. He was right--I very much enjoyed reading it. It's one of those books that is not only fascinating to read, but somehow leaves one fealing a little more whole, a little more healed for having read it....

Five more stars for Orson Scott Card. Just read the book. None of these reviews will do it justice.

Rating:
Summary: Quick read and can stand alone
Review: I read the book on flights to/from Europe. My paperback edition had nice large font, and Card's writing style flowed well, so the book is actually a quick read compared to Ender's Game.

I was surprised how well the book stands on its own. Yes, you won't have the coplete picture unless you read Ender's Game, but don't let that stop you from recommending this book.

Some readers have complained that the book merely retells the same story. I think that's like complaining when an author writes one book about Grant and another about Lee. Yes, there is some overlap, but most of the book does not overlap Ender's Game, and those parts that do cover the same events, have a different perspective.

I only have one minor quibble with the book: I didn't agree with a few of the actions performed by one or two characters; I simply thought they would have acted/done something differently. But, that's my personal feeling. After all, I'm not the author.

Finally, because of information presented in this book [stuff figured out by Bean], if one plans to read both books, one should definitely read Ender's Game first.

Rating:
Summary: a well-crafted addition to Ender's universe
Review: Ender's Shadow is a well-crafted companion plot that complements the original Ender saga, both by filling in details of the first installment and spinning off several new threads of its own. Although there are fewer plot surprises than in Ender's Game the additional intrigue and Bean's savage-but-fascinating origin compensate well.

Bean's story is fundamentally darker than Ender's. His origins are completely unknown until the investigations of a Catholic Nun and a Battleschool Commander reveal one disturbing layer after another. It also adds a visceral counterpoint to the final battle with the Buggers and blazes a trail for Shadow of the Hegemon. One note of caution: While Ender's Shadow is worth the read in its own right I would still recommend that readers new to Ender's universe read Ender's Game first.

Rating:
Summary: truly incredible
Review: I first read Ender's Game a couple of years ago, but I didn't really like it, it just didn't seem realistic, or relevant. The characters didn't behave as anyone I knew would, and the plot was simply... rediculous.

Various life experience have changed my mind about the Ender series, or at least Enders Game + Ender's Shadow, and i can now truly appreciate Orson Scott Card's brilliance. I had trouble identifying with Ender, but I could understand Bean, and I began to realize how incredible his character was.

Bean is brilliant, and logical, almost like Spock, but he is very small, and he begins as cold-hearted, a survivor, thrust, as an infant onto life on the streets of Rotterdam (funny how the only part set on mildly familiar ground, as in our planet :), is the most unrealistic). Within a few blissfully short pages he gets recruited as a potential military commander and trained at The Battle School, in space with the other best and the brightest kids in the world including, the all-powerful Ender Wiggin. Bean is bold, and curious, as he crawls through the airducts, trying to figure out exactly WHAT is going on... With Bean we have something that I never really got in Ender, a "real" gifted kid, psychologically complex, confused, brilliant, yet troubled, my hat is off to OSC on this one!

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Summary: Why *Ender's Shadow* is better than *Ender's Game*
Review: Most reviews so far seem to praise or blame this book because it is or is not the same as *Ender's Game.* I read *Ender's Shadow* first, and went on to *Ender's Game* afterwards. *Ender's Game* is an apprentice work. *Ender's Shadow* is a masterwork.

*Ender's Shadow* presents a brilliantly original character brought up in an extreme situation. To survive, he has to be a cognitive master, and so he is. Much of the book is taken up with Bean's thought processes. The emotions are often implied. There are a few passages where this made the book dry for me, but overall, I found this technique lent the book enormous emotional power. Bean is not very moral at the beginning, as why would he be? There is very little dream-imagery to make his emotional make-up clear, because his intellect *is* his emotional make-up, and his emotions drive his intellect. Out of the wirey emptiness of an intellectually rigorous loneliness, Bean reasons his way to a moral understanding of what he's doing in fighting the Buggers. When he evokes the words of the Bible in the final scene, the dramatic impact is wrenching. This character uses intellect to get through to a moral understanding of military force.

*Ender's Shadow* is original. To me, this sets it off from *Ender's Game*. There was certainly originality to that novel, too, but it also had similarities to lots of other military-training novels and films. The trainer with his heart in the right place, who does horrible things to the soldiers because it Must Be Done. Anyone remember similar scenes in *Starship Troopers*? What about all those tough sergeants in military films from the fifties? And how many times in those old movies was Our Hero victimized by a vicious other soldier? Many interesting parts of *Ender's Game* were left undeveloped. I am not satisfied by Peter Wiggin, and even Ender himself is a mere sketch compared to the full characters of *Ender's Shadow*. I love, too, the presentation of Sister Carlotta, the finely ambiguous combination of self-deception and real penetrating knowledge.

*Ender's Shadow* is true to itself to the end. This, too sets it off from *Ender's Game*, which has an ending that doesn't fit the book. The issue of the morality of the war comes up suddenly, and when we hear that the Buggers had not known humans were sentient, and had made a decision not to invade again when they realized.... If this was going to be a major theme in the ending, we should have heard a lot more about it earlier in the novel. It fudges the moral questions, too, by making the Buggers suddenly into innocent victims. Well, what if they *weren't* innocent victims? Kill'em all, right? *Ender's Shadow* sticks to the justification of absolute necessity, while raising questions about it. Also, Ender's apparent ignorance of his role in the deaths of both humans and aliens fudges *his* responsibility. Bean makes it his responsibility to understand. This is not to argue that Bean is a better person, but rather that the issues of the second novel are more interesting and more strongly set out than in the first.

Both books benefit from very careful, beautiful structuring, but *Ender's Shadow* more than the other. The extreme situation of survival at the beginning, and Bean's readiness to kill Achilles relates very directly to the situation of the human race Bean encounters at the end. Ender's situation was different, because he kills in hot blood at the beginning and in the middle, and thus has diminished responsibility, and his responsibility is also diminished at the end.

Bean stands in for a survivor character that has used his intellect to get through from a difficult begining, and this matches many, many people in the world today.