Ender's Shadow (Shadow, #1) by Orson Scott Card

Ender's Shadow by Orson Scott Card

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Goodreads Synopsis:

The human race is at War with the "Buggers," an insect-like alien race. As Earth prepares to defend itself from total destruction at the hands of an inscrutable enemy, all focus is on the development of military geniuses who can fight such a war, and win. The long distances of interstellar space have given hope to the defenders of Earth--they have time to train these future commanders up from childhood, forging them into an irresistible force in the high orbital facility called the Battle School. Andrew "Ender" Wiggin was not the only child in the Battle School; he was just the best of the best. In Ender's Shadow, Card tells the story of another of those precocious generals, the one they called Bean--the one who became Ender's right hand, part of his team, in the final battle against the Buggers. Bean's past was a battle just to survive. His success brought him to the attention of the Battle School's recruiters, those people scouring the planet for leaders, tacticians, and generals to save Earth from the threat of alien invasion. Bean was sent into orbit, to the Battle School. And there he met Ender....

My Review:

I loved Ender's Game and I loved this book. In my honest opinion, if you enjoyed Ender's Game you must read Ender's Shadow, and I would recommend reading them in that order as well. If you have seen the movie, Ender's Game and enjoyed it, you should probably pick up both books from the library right now! From Orson Scott Card's afterword, the movie is a "mash-up" of both stories. You can bet your bottom dollar that I'm going home tonight to watch the movie again for the umpteenth time.

This story follows the same timeline as Ender's, therefore you may already know the outline of the story. However, it delves so much deeper into the character of Bean. Bean was a great asset to Ender but we didn't really know much about him, we just understood he was smaller and younger than most of the other characters. Here, we get a much deeper picture of his psyche. He is small and physically develops slower than average, but has developed intellectually beyond anyone's imagination. I won't go into to much detail here, spoilers! It was a pleasure to watch him grow emotionally, and the ending was especially satisfying on that aspect. This story is much more political than I remember Ender's Game being, but it didn't portray a hidden agenda.

As for the characters, I came to love Bean even more the second time around, I still love Ender, Petra lost a lot of respect from me, Graff did at first as well, but redeemed himself at the end, I really enjoyed Nikolai and the effect he had on Bean, and Achilles scared me just as much as Peter Wiggings did.

I'm not sure what else to add besides . . . READ IT NOW!

Read in March, 2015

Top 5 Genres*: Science Fiction, Fiction, Young Adult, Science Fiction Fantasy, Fantasy
*According to Goodreads
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My ratings system
5 stars - I absolutely loved it
4 stars - Good book and would recommend
3 stars - Decent book, but wasn't spectacular
2 stars - Not good, but was able to finish it
1 stars - Did not finish (DNF) and I don't usually rate a book I haven't finished (just to be fair to the author)

View all my reviews