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Ender's Shadow (Ender, Book 5) Review

This book made me think of Ender's Game in a whole new light. In the driver's seat this time we have another brilliant student, possibly even more brilliant than Ender, and you really can't appreciate the commander as much after having read this book. If you want to continue to think of Ender as an incredible leader and a suffering human being, don't read Ender's Shadow. Shadow places Bean at the forefront and shows his contribution to Earth's victory over the Buggers. His personality is strikingly different from Ender. With less pressure on him, he is more cynical of his teachers and the way battle school is run, but he also has the insight to know the difference between when to rebel and when it actually matters. Despite adult intellect, Ender seems a child next to Bean's self-reflection and vision. He sees through every Battle School mind game, knows far ahead that the simulations are actual battles, and knows what his teachers are thinking before they do. This alternate personality adds another dimension to the story that has already blown us away. Personally, I have yet to read further in the Ender series, but I would call this parallel story a must-read after Ender's Game.

By the way, if anyone is wondering whether they should just read Shadow and not Game, or read them in the opposite order, I would say that I greatly enjoyed my experience reading Ender's Game first and Ender's Shadow almost a year later.

Ender's Shadow (Ender, Book 5) Feature

ISBN13: 9780765342409
Condition: New
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Ender's Shadow (Ender, Book 5) Overview

Welcome to Battleschool.

Growing up is never easy. But try living on the mean streets as a child begging for food and fighting like a dog with ruthless gangs of starving kids who wouldn't hesitate to pound your skull into pulp for a scrap of apple. If Bean has learned anything on the streets, it's how to survive. And not with fists. He is way too small for that. But with brains.

Bean is a genius with a magician's ability to zero in on his enemy and exploit his weakness.

What better quality for a future general to lead the Earth in a final climactic battle against a hostile alien race, known as Buggers. At Battleschool Bean meets and befriends another future commander - Ender Wiggins - perhaps his only true rival.

Only one problem: for Bean and Ender, the future is now.

Ender's Shadow (Ender, Book 5) Specifications

Ender's Shadow is being dubbed as a parallel novel to Orson Scott Card's Hugo and Nebula Award-winning Ender's Game. By "parallel," Card means that Shadow begins and ends at roughly the same time as Game, and it chronicles many of the same events. In fact, the two books tell an almost identical story of brilliant children being trained in the orbiting Battle School to lead humanity's fleets in the final war against alien invaders known as the Buggers. The most brilliant of these young recruits is Ender Wiggin, an unparalleled commander and tactician who can surely defeat the Buggers if only he can overcome his own inner turmoil.

Second among the children is Bean, who becomes Ender's lieutenant despite the fact that he is the smallest and youngest of the Battle School students. Bean is the central character of Shadow, and we pick up his story when he is just a 2-year-old starving on the streets of a future Rotterdam that has become a hell on earth. Bean is unnaturally intelligent for his age, which is the only thing that allows him to escape--though not unscathed--the streets and eventually end up in Battle School. Despite his brilliance, however, Bean is doomed to live his life as an also-ran to the more famous and in many ways more brilliant Ender. Nonetheless, Bean learns things that Ender cannot or will not understand, and it falls to this once pathetic street urchin to carry the weight of a terrible burden that Ender must not be allowed to know.

Although it may seem like Shadow is merely an attempt by Card to cash in on the success of his justly famous Ender's Game, that suspicion will dissipate once you turn the first few pages of this engrossing novel. It's clear that Bean has a story worth telling, and that Card (who started the project with a cowriter but later decided he wanted it all to himself) is driven to tell it. And though much of Ender's Game hinges on a surprise ending that Card fans are likely well acquainted with, Shadow manages to capitalize on that same surprise and even turn the table on readers. In the end, it seems a shame that Shadow, like Bean himself, will forever be eclipsed by the myth of Ender, because this is a novel that can easily stand on its own. Luckily for readers, Card has left plenty of room for a sequel, so we may well be seeing more of Bean in the near future. --Craig E. Engler

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Customer Reviews

Excellent companion to Ender's Game - Mike Gomez - Las Vegas, NV USA
Read it in 3 days. Though it's possible it can stand on it's own, it's much better, I'm betting, to read it after Ender's Game.

Excellent book, definitely recommended.

Swell Books - Sheeplicker5 - Oregon, USA
Card has produced by far my favorite books, Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow. They do have a plain style of writing, although it did make the story center around the story and not the author. This book in particular associated itself in my mind with Radiohead's Scatterbrain so that was quite nifty, too. I have almost all the books but I haven't read them all yet but I certainly plan to. My teacher read Ender's Game to us in middle school and I was able to see how great it was even though I DESPISE when people read to me.
I find it so unbelievable that people would find this to be a bad book, but I guess I should expect the worst such as my favorite author being a homophobe. YES! I SAID IT!!! ORSON SCOTT CARD IS A HOMOPHOBE! but that won't take away the feelings I have for the series. I love the lessons in Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow and that's all I will take away from it and I hope people will be able to, also, because they are great books.

Another wonderful story - ReadingWriter -
After reading Ender's Game, I had that sadness that you have when a wonderful book is over, and it's hard to imagine any other book being quite as good (although there is always the hope); then I heard about Ender's Shadow, a book that was parallel to Ender's Game. Intrigued, I downloaded Shadow onto my Kindle and have just finished reading it, all in one day. The quick read isn't so amazing -- it's an easy read, with that wonderful, plain, evocative style -- but the pleasure was unexpected. The story of Bean is so imaginative, and fits so well with Ender's, that it's not a letdown from Ender's Game at all; in fact it just enriches it. What an achievement for an author, to create a world large enough that he could reorient himself so well within it.

Delightful!

Great book- even on it's own! - M. K. Penner - La Verne, CA United States
For all the Ender lovers out there, this is a must read. I almost like this one better. Watching Ender struggle from the outside and Bean run interference...is great. The allusions are great and make the final moments-this time knowing the "game" touching. Not a Harry Potter style 300 page rearticulation of the previous book. It stands faithfully by Bean. Only critiques...the Absalom quote is used twice and a few others are heavy handed. A few other phrases are repeated from other books though not intentionally breaking point of view. Overall, a little heavy at moments, but beautiful and worth it.

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Sunday, September 5, 2010