Rating: 
Summary: Good premise, bad execution
Review: It wasn't a bad idea, really. The central idea holds so much promise: to recount the same events of "Ender's Game" but take a machiavellian, interpersonal view of everything. He tried to make a novel with merits wholly different from those of "Ender's Game," so it would be unfair to compare the two. As wholly separate novel, I would like to point out three major flaws.1. 7-tissue sob story. Having been a peace corps volunteer, I'd like to think I have some idea of what it's like to be poor. This is not it! Kids surviving by licking the sugar off of candy wrappers, or eating another person's vomit?? Maybe you can suspend belief for this part of it, but I could not at all. 2. Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde. The central problem is that OSC has tried to flesh out the personality of Bean, but has not made that personality match very well with that of the Bean found in "Ender's Game." as such, there is a major disconnect in scenes which come directly from "Ender's Game." Bean, who is a calculating, articulate hyperintelligence in most of "Ender's Shadow", becomes a spunky little kid when these scenes from "Ender's Game" appear. This was a major problem for me. The "Ender's Game" scenes are sprinkled in the story like salt on a pretzel, and it seems that Bean has a major schizophrenia attack whenever Ender Wiggin shows up. 3. cf. "Pale Fire", by Nabokov. Have you ever met anyone who has worked as a personal assistant to somebody famous like, say, Mel Gibson, who likes to explain that she was the reason that they used blue face paint in "Braveheart"? And not only that, but she's responsible for his choice of hairspray and for Lethal Weapon 6? Well, I haven't but after having read "Ender's Shadow" I now know what it would feel like. Much of the book reads like some groupie fantasy story, about how some insignificant person changed the life of someone famous. But it is a *fastasy* story still, like Bean's wet dream. The problem stems from that fact that, in Ender's Game, Bean was not a particularly influential person, and in this story, they really have to force situations. Oh, bean did this incredible thing for Ender, but Ender can never know about it. It doesn't work very well, because Ender's Game was such a good, well-constructed story, it's like adding tinsel to a Mondrian. Well obviously there are a lot of favorable reviews, and I guess the reviewers must have their reasons. But if realistic personalities is something that you need in a novel (I do, and it's part of the reason I liked Ender's Game so much), then you may want to skip this one.
Rating: 
Summary: Phenomenal book
Review: Absolutely LOVED it. It's as good or better than Ender's Game. This isn't typical science fiction - it's science fiction with a heart and a magnifying glass on human emotions.
Rating:
Summary: A Great Book For All!!!
Review: This is a great book for you sci-fi lovers. If you know anything about sci-fi books and it's authors, you'll know that this novel is fanaminal. All you have to do is look at the author. The greatest of them all is Orsen Scott Card. He writes books like you wouldn't believe. So all you sci-fi seekers out there, here's an author that will quite literally take your breath with his discribtive words, his book length, and his uniquiness in his writing. I have done a book reveiw on the first series in the novels, Ender's Game. The story takes place for a younge boy about 4 or 5. This boy has an unusually smart mind. By age 4, he can add subtract, multiply, divide, is able to comprehend pre-algebre, albebre and much much more. He lives on the streets in Amsterdam. There he is found with a "family" of other boys and girls around or older than he is by a teacher who trys to get food for these unfortunet people. In the process, she teaches the "family" how to add subtract and so forth. Basically all the basics a kid should know. One day she was giving out a test for the childeren. Accendentaly the little boy finishes the test in a few minutes, while the teacher was giving directions about how to do the test. At that moment she notices something speceal about the boy. She then takes him to an advanced school for other kids that orbits the Earth's atmosphere. He is then tought how to do many extrodenary things such as how to build and controll an army. For what resson you might ask. Well I can't tell you until you read the book!
Rating:
Summary: Ender and Bean - Subject and Shadow
Review: Once again Card has succeeded in surpassing what we thought was his best work. Standing about two to three feet tall at the self-proclaimed age of four years old, the main character starts out with no name at all. The "little boy" seems too small and took weak to ever amount to anything but a common street urchin - that is, if he can survive at all. Eventually named Bean by Poke, the 12 year old female leader of a street gang, this little boy turns out to be the key to a door that Ender's Game readers didn't know was locked.
Card's introductions promises that this is not a sequel to Ender's ame but a parallel novel. He does a magnificent job of keeping his promise. Bean trails Ender in gaining admittance to the Battle School by only a year or two, the main difference between the two being that Bean's purpose in getting there (with the help of Sister Carlotta) is to give him the chance to survive and Ender's purpose being to prove that he is the best.
A glimpse into the beginnings of Bean's life shows him outsmarting the smartest, going places that are off-limits to the normal-sized children and ultimately gaining knowledge that the other students are baffled by. Bean spends his time in the school hearing of the legendary Ender, cracking teacher password codes, climbing in and out of air ducts and shocking the faculty at how much information he knows - or guesses at, as the case is frequently.
The book is written from enough points of view to know which characters have what information and how Bean uses their knowledge to fulfill his personal agendas. It shows an alteration take place inside of Bean from looking out for number once to becoming the caretaker of all knowledge and number people both in the battle school and in the universe at large.
Card has astounded his audience once gain with a whole new view of an already best selling novel. The story of Ender becomes the story of Ender and Bean and their quest to save the universe.
Rating: 
Summary: Hard start but worth it
Review: I'm guessing it was a hard start because it was my introduction into the Ender series. I was a little lost at first and felt like I'd missed a chapter or two. (Actually, that would be a few books.) Once I picked up, though, it was an engrossing tale.
Rating: 
Summary: Card Writes Ender Re-do Without Heart
Review: After reading Ender's Game, I was hungry for more about Ender and his mates at Battle School. I was delighted to learn about Ender's shadow, because I had really liked the character of Bean in "Game".
After reading "Shadow," however, I wished I had read "Game" and left it at that. Card disappointed me with what he chose to reveal about Bean and Ender. What I love about Ender as a character is that despite his extraordinary intelligence and willingness to crush any opponents in his way, his ability to love is his greatest power. At each obstacle in the book, it is his connection with and understanding of his friends and enemies that helps him succeed. Also, it is his large heart that makes us as readers want him to succeed. Heart is also Card's most powerful tool in writing "Game". Ender would not have been as successful as a hero to the reader if Card wouldn't have written Ender with such emotion.
In contrast to Ender, Bean acts and thinks like a robot. He is everything Ender is not. He neither loves nor hates-- he displays only cold indifference. He makes no attempt to form attachment with any characters in the book, and because of this we as readers feel no connection with him. In writing Bean, Card mirrors Bean's traits. He puts no heart into creating "Shadow," and his writing blatently reveals this fact.
My advise to those who want to know more about Ender, Bean, and Battle School? Read Ender's Game again.
Rating:
Summary: an awesome new view
Review: i read ender's game and absolutely loved it and was dying to read more about battle school and the bugger war. i also wanted to see ender from someone else's point of view. so, needless to say, i was very pleased when i found this book. it gives you a great taste of a different sort of life and a very different kind of person. this book was at least the equal if not better than ender's game (i say that b/c it doesn't have a long sappy bit at the end like ender's game...card keeps it short and sweet at the end of this book and you learn more about what the world is like and how the teachers work at the school). overall this book was really, really good with no competition.
Rating:
Summary: A new perspective
Review: After reading Ender's Game, I picked up "Speaker for the Dead," the sequel, and found that it was nothing like it. I wanted to read more about Battle School and the people who went there. When I found out about "Ender's Shadow," I was very excited- Bean was one of my favorite characters and I was eager to read about Ender's experience at Battle School through Bean's eyes.
I got a lot out of Ender's Shadow. I gained a whole new perspective on the story and the characters, and I also learned a lot just by reading about Bean's time there. Bean was a child genius- almost impossibly smart. I really learned that being intelligent isn't getting good grades at school or thinking ut witty remarks; I learned from Bean that being smart is a lot more than that. The book was highly engrossing and hard to put down, the characters are memorable and surprisingly down-to-earth.
So why did I give this book 4 stars? Well, some parts, especially the ones with Sister Carlotta, I thought were drawn out and unnecessary to the story. I also thought that the VERY end of the book (not the part where Ender plays his last "game") was rushed and a little unrealistic. But these didn't take away from my enjoyment of the book.
Even though this book is not as good as it's "companion book," anyone who read Ender's Game and enjoyed it will like this book- it brings you back to good ol' Battle School and gives you a whole new twist on the story.
Rating:
Summary: A good companion
Review: I'd sworn up, down, and sideways not to pick up Ender's Game again (I love Card's writing, but his language in E.G. bothers me) but on vacation I ran across Ender's Shadow and decided to give the book a chance. I liked it well enough that I skipped the cursing and went on to buy Shadow of the Hegemon. This is not Ender's Game, but it is a great book and good setup for Shadow of the Hegemon.
Rating: 
Summary: A heart-wrenching disappointment
Review: I wanted to love this book. I was so excited when it first came out -- ecstatic, really. "Ender's Game" has been my favorite book since I first discovered it over 10 years ago, and I couldn't imagine anything better than rereading my favorite story through another character's eyes. Boy, was I wrong. The story itself was well told, and if I had read this before "Ender's Game," I would have loved it. Unfortunately, what the book did for me instead was ruin the character of Ender. I loved Ender, his gifts and his faults, his failures and successes. I love his story and I've read it countless times. I didn't like the view I got of him from Bean, who according to "Ender's Shadow" was smarter and faster than Ender, who was ready to step in any time Ender stumbled, and who was basically just all around "better" than Ender. It felt like I was reading the self-absorbed biography of a jealous child trying to knock Ender off his pedestal, and I was left actively disliking Bean a whole hell of a lot. This book has colored everything I ever loved about Ender and "Ender's Game"; I pretty much am trying to just forget I ever read it.
|
