Ender's Shadow

Rating:
Summary: A good story, but a betrayal nonetheless
Review: The story is good and entertaining, but I think most fans of Ender's Game will feel betrayed by the plot. As others have said, the undermining of Ender Wiggin and the way Card tries to fit this "revised" Bean into the fabric of Ender's Game often doesn't fit together.

Ender was a more believable character than the Bean of Ender's Shadow, and I was deeply disappointed in the way Ender's genius was somehow negated by Card's revision of the story.

It would have been a better story on it's own.

Rating:
Summary: Good plot, good end
Review: I really enjoyed the book, and I thought that the twists of the plot were creative. Orson Scott Card has struck gold again here. What I enjoyed most were the small details that bonded Ender's Shadow with Ender's Game. The small things that showed Bean's different point of view due to his hard life on the street held the novel together. It kept this prize of a book from becoming just another sequel. A must read. Maybe Card should write a sequel about Bean's enteraction with Ender's brother and sister...

Rating:
Summary: A Fantastic Read!
Review: I was really excited when I found out that Orson Scott Card was writing another novel related to Ender and was especially enthralled by the fact that this one was about Bean, one of my favorite characters in Ender's Game. Ender's Shadow is a great idea on the part of Card and provided another way to more clearly express his view of the story. I found it extremely interesting to find how Bean was so smart and to find out many other little secrets about his fascinating personality. I never realized that he had come from being homeless on the streets before going to Battle School. I think Card did an extraordinary job at weaving the two stories together, finding pauses in one story to insert thoughts into the other. It seemed odd to me that whenever Bean figured out something truly extraordinary, he put it out of mind and pretended it was a lie. I know he was doing it to protect himself, but it struck me as just a little bit odd. I hope that in the future, Card will write more books relating to both Ender and Bean. I am sure they will be marvelous pieces of work, since Card is one of the greatest science fiction writers in a long time.

Rating:
Summary: Thank God I Can Relive The Adventure Again!!!
Review: Ender's Game captured my heart and my soul, and made me fall in love. When Ender's Shadow came out, I hoped it was going to capture me the same way. Well, it did! Card has a way of making you fall in love with his characters. I believe that's why he can get away with so many sequiles. Card, I thankyou, and long for your next. Please, don't die until I do!

Rating:
Summary: A good Book But No Ender's Game
Review: Just Like the Book Bean was great but no Ender, He is as smart as Ender but could never lead, he was too abrasive and not as mature as Ender. In addition anyone who says that bean is smarter is wrong, he may have thought up one or two new ideas but it was ender who implemented them to perfection not Bean.

Rating:
Summary: Suprisingly awesome.
Review: I own nearly every book Orson Scott Card has ever written. To me, his career can be neatly divided into pre-Ender's Game and post-Ender's Game. His pre-Ender stuff is fairly typical science fiction and, to me, not memorable or even all that good. Ender's Game, though, was something special.

But I never thought Ender's Game deserved to be on a list of the top ten science fiction books of all time. This puts me in the minority of Card fans, who generally believe that Ender's Game is Card's best book. I frankly like the first two sequels to Ender's Game, and some of Card's other books (particularly the Alvin series), better than Ender's Game. And I never really could understand what people thought was so, so great about Ender's Game. Good, yes. But not great.

Now that I have read Ender's Shadow, I finally get what others really loved about Ender's Game. Ender's Shadow is basically the same story as Ender's Game, but told from the perspective of a relatively minor character from Ender's Game, Bean. The plot of both books is that aliens have invaded Earth twice and barely defeated. To prepare for the inevitable Third Invasion, the military seeks out the most intelligent children on Earth and sends them to Battle School, which is a space station where the children can practice three dimensional warfare and learn how to be leaders.

Some of the themes of both Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow are how the military manipulates the children's minds and how mentally draining the training is on them. But while in Ender's Game, these things are described, in Ender's Shadow, Card's writing style has improved so much that I really could feel what the children were going through. I can appreciate their struggles a lot better than I could after reading Ender's Game.

Also, the change in character was important. Ender's Game is told from the perspective of Ender, who is great and everything, but he is basically the typical science fiction hero and everyone around him knows it. Bean is much more interesting because he is a brilliant misfit whose talents are rarely publicly acknowledged by the other characters. Believe me, I can relate to characters with great talent that is not appreciated by other people better than to characters who are loved by all! :-)

One funny thing about the book is that it manages to be very suspenseful even though readers of Ender's Game already know the Big Surprise Ending. But the ending of Ender's Shadow, which comes after the Big Surprise Ending, brought tears to my eyes, and I think the only other book ever to do that to me was To Kill a Mockingbird. Ender's Shadow even brilliantly sets up a sequel to itself which I eagerly look forward to. So there's a lot more going on than just a re-tread of Ender's Game.

Read this book!! (After reading Ender's Game. Card says in his interoduction that he intends Ender's Shadow to stand on its own, but I say you should read Ender's Game before Ender's Shadow.)

Rating:
Summary: A challenge well met
Review: Wow! OSC rose to the challenge and then some. A moving story, well-written, well-paced, and thoroughly enjoyable. I can't wait to go back and re-read Ender's Game (for the 3rd or 4th time) with a new perspective. This is the best novel I've read in a long time. Highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: I couldn't stop reading this book!
Review: You don't want to miss this one -- probably my favorite Card book so far (and that's saying something!). If you love the Ender series, you must read this book! If you've never read the Ender series, you must read this book! It's truly the best book I've read in a long, long time.

Rating:
Summary: In the spirit of the original
Review: This is a terrific read. It reads very much like Ender's Game. It is suspenseful until the end, even though many readers know the outcome already. Highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Great story, but too constrained by Ender's Game.
Review: Card took on an original idea in developing an parallel novel to Ender's game. However, this literary experiment would have been more successful if both books could've been written simultaneously, or if Card would've understood Bean's character more when writing Ender's Game. As it is, intersecting the two stories seems forced at times.

Card does some excellent writing here, though, creating a compelling character in Bean. And there is the possiblilty of a highly intriguing sequel.