Ender's Shadow

Rating:
Summary: The Bean
Review: First of all let me just explain that my review might be prejudiced because, well, I love Bean. He has become, and was even in Ender's Game, my favorite character in the series.

Ender's Shadow is not a sequal, it is a parallel universe. It is the story of Bean who, in Ender's Game, is a minor character, though Orson Scott Card certainly has a way of bringing that character to life. It starts on the streets of Rotterdam and progresses to Battle School where Bean experiences much of what Ender did--but in entirely new ways.

First of all, Bean is smart. Far smarter than Ender, despite the age difference. He's also ridiculously small--his flash suit had to be cut up to make it fit.

This book covers topics not present very much, or at all, in Ender's Game, such as genetic engineering and world politics. While Ender's Game focused primerily on the task at hand (getting Ender through Battle School), this one branches further out into history, the rest of the world, and glimpses of the future.

One of the things that some hate, but I loved, was the psychological aspect. I love when you truly see the reason behind someone's thoughts and feelings. There is a lot of this in Ender's Shadow. It's interesting to see how things that took Ender months to figure out come instantly to Bean, and some points that were focal areas of the first book are barely noticed in this. I applaud OSC's ability to make the same events into two truely different stories.

Rating:
Summary: The True Sequel to one of Sci-Fi's greatest books
Review: Ender's Game is one of the best science fiction books I've ever written, but the sequels which followed Ender seemed to lose the magic of the first story, and drastically changed the mood and character of the first. Although I eventually enjoyed the sequels for the seperate world they created, I still wished to return to the world of Ender's Game.

Ender's Shadow thus takes us back to the events of the first novel, and in much the same vein. This time we follow a different child genius - Bean, the tiny child who became Ender's right hand. The fascination of watching another child fight for survival returns, and yet Bean has a very different life than Ender. Orphaned at a few months old, Bean uses his intelligence to survive on the streets amoung young gangs. This prelude to the Battle School is amazing, deep, and worth the price of the novel in and of itself.

Then Bean is recruited for the Battle School, and goes through an education much in the same way as Ender. The school faculty even wonders if Bean will succeed Ender should the older child fail. Not only do we watch Bean move through the same gauntlet as Ender had, but we catch glimpses of Ender from an outsider. Bean's perspective makes Ender seem even greater than the first novel, as Bean's considerable intelligence makes his worship of Ender believable. Plus, we are allowed to return to the world of genius kids fighting in zero gravity, the politics and the "system" set up to save the world.

Rating:
Summary: I wish I had read this one first...
Review: This book is the telling of how in the future in order to prepare for the alien threat combat schools employee doctrination and training in kids as young as 5yrs old. The kids are trained to eventually be the fighting force and the commanding officers down the road when the second wave of attacks come. This story is a rehash of Ender's Game but from the perspective of Bean. Here are my two cents worth:

1) First off, everthings I've read from Orson Scott Card I've thoroughly enjoyed. His prose and flow are very enjoyable and this book is no different. The fact that the author braves retelling the same story but from another character's perspective I tip my hat to him for bravery.

2) BUT...I really felt this book was too long at times. I felt the internal conversations Bean has just go on, and on, and on resulting in this being the biggest failing of this book.

3) No matter how much Card tells us Bean is super intelligent I really felt that the mental converstations Bean has are too mature. Intelligence does not beget maturity.

4) Reading the same story but from a different character's perspective wasn't as enjoyable as other reviewers make it out to be. It was nice to get Bean's background and see how he gets himself into battle school. But once he is there it isn't as intriguing and suspensful as Ender's Game. It would be better just to re-read Ender's Game over again for the battle school experience.

5) I do look forward to Shadow of the Hegimon (sp?) as this will be a fresh story with the same likeable characters.

OVERALL: I would have enjoyed this book so much more if I had read this one first then Ender's Game second. If you have a choice I think you will get a lot more out of Ender's Game and enjoy this book more than I did.

Rating:
Summary: OSC has done it again
Review: Enders shadow is the most compeling novel I have read in a long time.It dose things that other novels can only dream of.
OSC has deliverd another outstainding novel that hooks you right from the begining and keeps your intrest all the way to the end. You cant realy call this book a sequal to Enders Game because it tells the samme series of events but from Beans perspective. It starts of wiht Beans life on the streets of rotterdam and continues to tell you how he came to battle school. Like Enders Game this book has a faster pace than the rest of the series. It has a steady flow to it that is raley unabated. I have to warn yuo that this book has a bit of brutality to it that can disturb younger readers. with this complaint aside, Enders shadow lives up to its older brother. I recomend thais book to all readers of OSC and others who want to get into the sereis.Enders shadow is one of the best Science fiction novels out there.

Rating:
Summary: very impressed
Review: I was VERY impressed with "Ender's Shadow". I read "Ender's Game" several years ago and finished reading the other sequels to it not long ago. I became frustrated and bored with "Xenocide" halfway through, and the less said about "Children of the Mind" the better. Thanks to Mr. Card, my interest in the Ender story has been rekindled through this fine, parallel storyline involving Ender's classmate Bean.

Card has always had an understanding of how to develop his character's motivations through their personal philosophy. He has a firm understanding that it is a person's underlying beliefs and their use of knowledge that contributes most heavily to their responses to the world around them. In the character of Bean, the coldly logical aspects of his character determine his actions and allow Bean to reach conclusions based upon his personal view of the world. Card does not cop-out; Bean always behaves in a consistent manner and is one of the strongest characters of Card's career.

This story is well told and moves along nicely. The world these people live in is not as "complete" as some people would like it to be, however I found that as a reader I was told everything I needed to know without any unnecessary details. Some may have questions about how the rest of the population of Rotterdam lives their lives, for example, but I didn't care very much since our story revolves around the inner-city children's "crews". Any extra information would have bogged down this story. I don't mean that "Ender's Shadow" is devoid of detail; it isn't. Card delivers the important details such as character motivation, and has the sense enough to skip the rest.

The pacing is quick and the scriptwriting is as witty as it is thoughtful. Card has a charming voice when he chooses to; he also has a deadly serious side which pulls no punches.

As a science fiction writer, Orson Scott Card follows a different path than most. He doesn't try to explain the high technology ad nauseum like many other writers in this field do. I would liken his SF style to that of Ray Bradbury, meaning that the story takes precedence over the "ohhs and ahhs" of the science.

Although this is one of many sequels of "Ender's Game", I don't get the feeling that Card is milking his previous success here. Even though the foundation for this book had already been written, I can appreciate the labor of love that Card poured into this novel. His initial plan had been to co-write or farm out this idea to another writer; that would have been a more telling indicator of "milking" past success than this novel is.

Fans of this series have probably read this book already. I would recommend reading it immediately following "Ender's Game" and before "Speaker for the Dead". The other sequels are readable but I'm sure you can live a long and fulfilling life without them.

Rating:
Summary: Great sequel
Review: Having attracted both young and old alike, Ender's game has been considered a modern classic in the science fiction genre. Ender's shadow continues the Card's master storytelling.

We see the adventure this time through the eyes of Bean. With enough new story lines this is more than a retelling of the battle with the buggers but an refreshing look at the same moral struggles and ethical dilemmas from a fresh perspective.

Rating:
Summary: Good story but a "shadow" of Ender's Game.
Review: I think I would have really enjoyed this book if I hadn't read Ender's Game first. Don't get me wrong, it was still a good read. I just felt that the author was short-changing Ender by writing this book and making it sound like Bean was the real hero. I thought Ender was a much better character. He was a genius but he was a kid too and he was a real underdog. I never got that feeling with Bean and I think that's a shame. It also lacked the meaningful ending that Ender's Game had. It was nice to see Bean meet his family but so much more meaningful to see Ender realize that this war he'd won had all been a misunderstanding. That's good stuff there... the kind that makes you question the wars in our own time.

Despite that I do recommend this book. What I've read of OSC so far has been enjoyable. He's one of those writers that you want to read more than once to make sure you get everything. I'm looking forward to reading more from him.

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!