Ender's Shadow

Rating:
Summary: WOW!
Review: Ender's Shadow is every bit as exciting as Ender's Game! Orson Scott Card seems to weave words into beutiful works of art in this amazing book! I suggest it to anyone who likes a good book. I hope you enjoy it!

Rating:
Summary: Absolutely supurb!
Review: Only Orson Scott Card could create a parallel novel and make it this fascinating and enjoyable. While I am slightly disappointed in the fact that Bean's story takes a little of the wind from Ender, the story more than makes up for that in its orginality and depth. I loved Ender's Game so much that just the additional information about the characters is enough to rate Shadow 4 stars. The additional star is for Shadow's wonderful plot and fascinating characters. Bravo!

Rating:
Summary: Enticing...but only because Ender's Game was.
Review: Once you notice that Ender's Shadow is so powerful only because it nearly mirrors Ender's Game (but never quite equals it), it loses reading value. I would enourmously advise reading this PRIOR to Ender's Game (sans the ending, of course) for a true tour de force.

The basic premise of the book is a view of the same events as in Ender's Game through a pair of different eyes - the eyes of a cold-blooded survavalist, a semi-success, more intelligent than anyone around, a child able to figure out anything, capable of carrying out a total security breach in a space-born top-secret facility.

Perhaps this book fails because of its lack of a human element. Bean is not equally as sympathetic as Ender. His calculative emotionless is underlined time and time again, probably because Card has a habit of writing out everything his protagonists think. By the same token Bean doesn't seem to be suffering as much as Ender, both in Rotterdam and Battle School. He comes out unscathed from every situation. And, naturally, since Card is not emotionless himself, you can sense flaws in Bean's design, and that distracts. Bean's self-discovery seems slavish - one reviewer of Ender's Game remarked that it was an attempt to glorify slavery and fascism - I believe that remark is very fitting in this case. The plot, by default, centers once again on Ender.

The imagery lacks - as always. At times I was forced to stop reading and visualize where exactly particular air ducts went. Even characterization is a far cry to Ender's Game (particularly in Achilles' case, if you sense my drift). Bean's wondrous intelligence is offset by the fact that he presumes nearly everyone to be stupid: whereas Bonso Madrid had the refined fury in Ender's Game, here he is simply crude.

The Earthside elements seem a bit contrived, but despite Sister Carlotta's one-dimensionality I felt more for her than I did for Bean, and that is perhaps the worst thing there is to say about a book.

If only the book wasn't centered on Ender, it would have been much more of a success. As it is, it doesn't quite rack up to the original.

Rating:
Summary: I couldn't/can't get enough!
Review: The first time I read Ender's Shadow I inhaled it in about 6 hours. The next day I picked it up and started reading it again. After finishing it for a second time I logged on to the internet at the author's home page and read the first five chapters of the sequel, Shadow of the Hegemon. I cannot get enough of these characters, the story. While I do feel that Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow could have been consolidated into one book due to the repetition of events, I enjoyed reading both books separately. I feel that Card's writing has matured since he wrote Ender's Game, and I felt that Ender's Shadow reflected that maturity, and was perhaps even more enjoyable than Ender's Game. Warning: these books are addictive! Start reading them at your own risk!

Rating:
Summary: The Mind of a Supergenius
Review: ES was a wonderful parallel novel to ES. The beginning was probably the best part, showing the most weakness of Bean (though not much, even then.) Once he gets to Battle School, the way he manipulates teachers is intriuging. As said in an earlier review, the suspense dies down after a while because Bean never has any weaknesses. There are several: His size, which not only limits his physical performance but the way he commands as well, the cold-heartedness of Bean opposed to the nice and much-loved Ender and the way he is bullied by other kids. Though it would have been better with more thoughts from Bean, the parts with Dragon Army were thoroughly fun and interesting. We got to see the reasons behind what Bean says, and you get to see how truly awesome Dragon Army is. Though the ending should be considered happy, seeing Ender's mistakes through Bean's eyes made me want to scream at Ender, and cry fo poor Bean, who'd never get to command. Orson Scott Card probably feels this way too, for he is writing another story of Bean so he will finally get the respect he deserves. The science of Anton's key was neat, and all characters were well-developed, though it was hard to feel what Bean felt, except in the rare times he has feelings. OSC showed us how it feels to be the better man for the job sitting on the sidelines. A great book.

Rating:
Summary: Good book...
Review: I really wanted to like this book. And I did, but not because it was necessarily a great book. I just really enjoy OSC's writing style. This book starts and ends at the same point as the parallel Ender's Game, the difference being that is Bean's story, not Ender's. While at first I was a little skeptical, I started the book and had a pleasant surprise.

Bean is a completely different person from Ender, with different thinking proceses, and different background, and different life philosophies. The opening chatpers in Rotterdam really set this book up and gave it a lot of potential. And then Bean got to Battle School.

After the initial couple of exploratory chapters, the bulk of this book is just a rehash of Ender's game. Of course the author tried to disguise this, but that's what it was. We had the same dialogue, the same situations, but what's new is the author describes how everything looks in detail now, filling in a lot of pages with that, and with the administrative side of BS. It was readable, even immediately after reading EG, but it was very redundant. And then after Ender left, not nearly enough time was spent developing Bean's nemesis Achilles. He arrives, is introduced and is finished with within a chapter.

Even with all this, a lot of intereting questions are raised during the book, especially concerning Beans' physiology. Unfortunately, this book not only doesn't answer these questions, but it seems to forget about them as soon as they're asked, ending the story without facing any important issues such as -- how will Bean react when he finds out how his life will end?

Maybe we will get these answers in the forthcoming "Shadow of the Hegemon," but as this book stands, it doesn't offer enough to rate more than three stars. It's a relatively good book, and I recommend reading it, but it's not really necessary after Ender's Game.

Rating:
Summary: Maybe Urchin would have been better...
Review: Card, in the acknowledgements, voices his wish to have named the book Urchin, only to be trumped by the marketability of the name "Ender". So in a desire to sell books, his publishers convinced him to force everyone to look at Bean, and at this novel, through the eyes of their love for Ender and Ender's Game. That was a mistake.

It seems that the Ender aficionadoes out there judge Card a standard by which he himself set. For them, every other book must meet or at least approach meeting the acclaim of Ender's Game, otherwise it is a dismal failure. To anyone fitting this description, please read Card's masterpiece, "The Worthing Saga". I think you may finally be able to tear yourselves free from your Ender obsession and be able to recognize that Card is a very talented and engaging writer even when he is not writing about Ender Wiggin. Then perhaps you can return to "Ender's Shadow" with an open mind.

"Ender's Shadow" is a well-written, substantial book in it's own right. The development of Bean through his precocious street life to the final battle reveals a depth and complexity beyond even his hyper-brilliant mind. This is not a novel about a "superkid" as a reader below says. This novel dives into a child's psyche to discover what lies bare at the center of all of us. There is no question as to Bean's ability. His infallibility of mind leaves no excuse for any fallibility of character. Card is hopeful about human nature and exemplifies with Bean the possibility of benevolence even in a world of vacuous and deceptive morality. Card's little urchin from Rotterdam stands tall enough on his own and casts a shadow so large that a comparison to his commander is not necessary. And so it is with this book and its "parallel".

Rating:
Summary: Ender's Game's Shadow: About 30% (net) of an excellent book
Review: I don't really blame Card for writing this book. Not every writer has a lot of control over what he/she writes - some of them just get possessed by the Muse and, seemingly unable to control themselves, produce whatever experiment or tour de force the Muse happens to have in mind. Card seems particularly susceptible.

So here is Card's dilemma: having produced the gemlike Ender's Game long ago, and having composed the superb sequel Speaker for the Dead, and two less superb sequelae, he now looks back upon Ender Wiggin's original supporting cast and finds himself overcome with regret for their untold stories. "What a pity," he may have said, "that I did not shape the character of Bean in my mind those many years ago, as clearly as I beheld the Wiggin family! Well, better late than never!" So he creates this book, a book 'parallel' to Ender's Game, the same slice of time and space (mostly) seen through the eyes of Bean.

Well, here's the unavoidable and really problematic thing: after you get through the opening chapters about Bean's toddler-genius life in an apocalyptic Rotterdam reduced to the conditions of life of the Ik in Colin Turnbull's "The Mountain People", you find yourself in the story of Ender's Game. Yes, it's another perspective. Yes, it's a complementary set of insights. But it's the same setting and the same War and many of the same battles. The bottom line is that the sum of Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow is less than two whole books, and really comes to something like 1.3 Ender's Game Units. And since you HAVE to read Ender's Game, because it really IS a gem, then you will find yourself only about 30% more fulfilled having read this one IN ADDITION.

Now, it may be that there are some people reading this review who have not yet read Ender's Game. I must direct those people to go out and read EG, because it is by far the superior work, and then decide whether the additional "perspective" is worth the additional time. Of course when you pick it up you may conclude that it is just another entry in the "harsh space military school" genre, which well by now ought to have been drained by a host of authors, going back before Heinlein and leading up to Busby and Feintuch in the present. But this would be like dismissing Lord of the Rings as "just another fantasy novel with elves". At the heart of any such genre there are a few Epitomes, seed crystals which give the genre its life and form.

Ender's Shadow suffers in comparison with Ender's Game, because Bean is a superman. Superchild. Much more so than the talented Ender. And that makes him less interesting, not more, in my view. The superchild genre has also been heavily mined over the decades, and this volume (even considered completely independently from Ender's Game) suffers in comparison with Cherryh's Cyteen, Dickson's Final Encyclopedia, King's Firestarter, Van Vogt's Slan, and the whole Justice League of other superchildren in contemporary SF.

For a good superman/woman/child novel to work, it helps if there is some tension between the superbeing's assets and weaknesses. The first few chapters balance this nicely: how does a four-year-old, super-smart but without any access to machines, manage to avoid starvation and murder? (Actually, a book about Bean's hypothetical twin brother Schmean, who never goes to School but stays in Rotterdam fighting for survival, would have been better.) But the tension deflates rapidly when Bean reaches the School, where he will not be killed, where he has enough to eat, and where he has utterly hacked the Network inside the first day. After that he is ten steps ahead of everyone the whole time, the officers gape and gasp ("How could he have found THAT out! ") and there's no suspense. Furthermore, having been raised in the barbarism of the streets, he progresses more or less automatically toward Goodness, driven by his good genes, I suppose. Ender's own story was much more interesting, both because he was not a Superbeing and because the progress of the story was the other way, as he was being twisted away from normality toward being a Weapon.

Now, here is what Card should have done. If he was really overpowered by the desire to tell Bean's story, and/or other tales of the Dragon Army, he should have considered the drastic step of rewriting and expanding Ender's Game (you can call this the "Director's Cut" solution if you want). That might have resulted in a larger and better book. As it stands, Ender's Shadow is not much more than a shadow of Ender's Game.

Rating:
Summary: Stupendous and Amazing Book
Review: The ability of one author to continually astound me doesn't happen very author but Card has managed to do it. This book is truly amazing. First of all from the very fact that its a parallel book. That is such an innovative and unique concept in its own right that I knew I had to try this book out. And Card manages to execute this with extreme skill. The parallels and interweacing of this book with the original Ender's Game are amazing.

Second of all I wanted to comment on how well the characters in this book develop Bean in particular of course but all of the characters. Bean starts out as an almost artificial character with traits that are very unnatural and then he slowly matures throughout the novel, and by the end you recognize how much he has grown, but watching this growth is the truly exciting part.

Another exciting aspect of this book is how much it differs in terms of the overall message from the first book and yet seems to be parallel in a way. Both books talk about what it means to grow up and what it means to be human but they do it from completely different perspectives.

Many people feel that these characters are too over the edge too perfect and that they are not realistic. That might be true in some respects, but personally those are the kind of people I like to read about because they inspire me to great heights. On the other hand this book shows that neither Ender nor Bean were perfect and that each obviously has something the other doesn't have.

In the end, this book is great whether you've read the original series or not (which I highly reccomend by the way, Ender's Game, Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, and Children of the Mind, all truly great books). Now I just can't wait to re-read Ender's Game again. This book will place it in a whole new light I'm sure and make it feel like I'm reading a completely new book.

Rating:
Summary: Ender's Shadow over Orson
Review: Ender's Game casts a long shadow over all of the subsequent work by Orson Scott Card. The phenomenally successful short story turned novel was followed by the markedly different, but equally intriguing, Speaker for the Dead. From there the series went down hill, and apparently ended in a whimper with Children of the mind.

Ender's Shadow is an attempt to rekindle the fire. Card returns to the scene of Ender's Game, writing what he terms to be a "parallel" novel, rather than a sequel. Ender's Shadow is nonetheless a sequel, and not a very good one. A reader could not understand the basic plot without having read Ender's Game, making it de facto a sequel. The novel focuses on "Bean", a minor character in the original book. As a character, Bean lacks the appealing qualities that drew the reader to Ender. Card provides a biotechnical explanation for the fact that Bean's intellect that overshadows even Ender's prodigious ability. This removes the David versus Goliath effect that permeated the original story as talented but young Ender struggled to meet expectations. Struggled is the key concept. Everyone struggles in some fashion in their life, meaning that anyone could identify with Ender, even though he subsumed Mozart's creativity and Einstein's intellect. Bean's effortless accomplishments are more reminiscent of machine than man. Card's use of opening dialogue between Battle School commanders at the beginning of each chapter is much less effective than that in Ender's Game. The most difficult issue Card faced in writing this novel is the lack of the surprise element that characterized Ender's Game. He pieced together a story that was mediocre in the end. Card sets up the scenario for a sequel. I hope that he will get back to the gritty elements of human existence and struggle that made Ender's Game such a success.