Ender’s Shadow is the perfect complement to Ender’s Game.

When I finished Ender’s Game, I just sat there for an hour processing what I’d read. Similar experience with this book. But whereas Ender’s Game left me sem jeito (feels appropriate to throw in a little Portuguese here since Card does during Battle School all the time!) because of the sure magnitude, Ender’s Shadow left me speechless because of how intricately it complements the story of Ender’s Game. It added a whole new level of depth to an already thought provoking story. How have I gone so long without reading this?!?

So fun to see Ender from a third party perspective! My favorite moments in this book surrounded Bean and Ender’s relationship or seeing how they are at once so similar but so different as the pressure mounts for both of them. I also thought Bean’s character development was remarkable. I really enjoyed being inside his analytical mind as he tried to make sense of Ender’s intangible qualities and what they meant for himself.

This book complements Ender’s Game so well because of how well Bean complements Ender. Every Ender needs a Bean just like every Lincoln needs a Seward or Stanton. What a powerfully moving book!

n  n

4.0 to 4.5 stars. Okay, now don't turn away thinking that this book is just a "re-telling" of the story of Ender's Game from the perspective of the character of Bean. Not at all. This is not simply OSC cashing in on the success of the Ender Series. This is a completely different novel and there is little to no overlap in the actual events of Ender's Game. It simply takes place at the same time as those events.

The purpose of this story is two fold. First, we get to really know Bean who turns out to be a character as gifted as Ender and whose life story is absolutely fascinating. Growing up poor and homeless on the streets in Amsterdam, Bean difficult early childhood is used as the backdrop to explore the Earth of Ender's Game and provide much greater detail of the socio-political-economic environment. I love that kind of stuff so I was in heaven.

From there, we get to see Bean's recruitment into Battle School and watch the very different road he takes through the Formic (or bugger) War described in Ender's Game. At the end, it feels like we have finally been told the complete story.

The second and MUCH MORE IMPORTANT purpose of this novel is to set the stage for the novels that follow (Shadow of the Hegemon, Shadow Puppets and Shadow of the Giant), of which Bean is a central character and which deals with the aftermath of the Formic wars on Earth and the rise of Peter Wiggins (Ender's brother) as Hegemon of Earth.

This is a wonderful novel and the beginning of a new and exciting chapter in the Ender saga. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!

Nominee: Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel (2000)
Nominee: SFSite Reader's Poll Best Science Fiction Novel (2000)

This edition comes with a forward by Mr. Card in which he expresses the opinion that his "later books" in the Ender series are "better" than the first "Ender's Game" but that the first book is action packed, adventurous, and has a boy as main character, so it appeals to younger readers. Thus the greater sales etc. are due to the number of younger readers. Well, I suppose that is part of it. But, even though Mr. Card is the writer, I must "on the whole" disagree with him. The first book is just...better. It doesn't mean others didn't "understand" or didn't "get" his other books, the later books are just more caught up in Mr. Card's own belief system and ideas. They get a bit pedantic.

This book is well written. While I've noted before that the "coming of age" story isn't a "genre" I find particularly appealing. This one however "holds it together" as follow Bean in his development and watch an actual growth process. I find the book overall not as good as Ender's Game but still a good book. I'm not sure how everyone will feel (what they will think) about a retelling of the events in Ender's Game from the point of view of Bean. I personally think there are some good sized holes here and there but nothing that will ruin it for you. As I said, "overall" a good read...oh yeah, and there's some action to. (LOL)

A smart and interesting parallel book, completing nicely Ender's Game.

Bean is an orphan living in the streets. When he's selected to join battle school, he discovers a new world that he masters quickly. But dealing with people and secrets is complicated, especially because people keep comparing Bean to Ender.

As the other Ender's books, this one was smart and interesting to discover, even if all the "Russian threat" felt a bit dated. I didn't really like Bean, he wasn't a bad character but he lacked the emotional level necessary for me to connect with him. Still, I appreciated how he was self conscious, always questioning himself and the events, so it gave new insights about what was happening in the world and why the teachers acted in the way they did. I was fangirling all over the place because of Ender, but I'd enough time to enjoy these new knowledges about the events. If I preferred Ender's Game, I found Ender's Shadow satisfying and also compelling, which seemed impossible at first with a story taking place between or during Ender's Game. I'll continue with the series.

I really enjoyed this book! I wasn't initially thrilled about the idea of a parallel to Enders Game, but this was very well done. It gave a lot of back information to the story, and told it all from the perspective of Bean, whose story is way more complex than Enders Game ever hinted at. I love the world of these stories so visiting it again was great. I could almost say that I enjoyed this one more than Enders Game, but it's definitely very close. A great read overall. Loved it

I think I may have like this better than Ender's Game. Maybe I wouldn't have liked it at all if I had read them back to back or had read it rather than listened to it, but trying to remember the sequences in Ender's Game as I read them from a different perspective was interesting. I enjoyed seeing the story from the one training just in case Ender fails. Bean's impassionate analysis vs Ender's emotional turmoil. The kid you don't quite like at first because he's too self-confident in his intelligence and then you learn to trust him better than you would yourself. That's about how I felt about the book too. Slow at first but then as you weave into Bean's perspective you see everything from his conclusions and I came to like him very much, more even than Ender. I empathized with him more and came to to root for him more than I ever had for Ender. How systematically Bean took his place knowing everyone would follow Ender but not him, understanding people did not like or trust him, processing lengthy paragraphs of deductive reasoning in a split second until he had could accurately access any situation so you as the reader recognize the potential he never gets credit for. His story's a little more heart-wrenching than Ender's. He could have been the hero, even if he did not believe it himself. I liked that Bean. And I liked his story.

My only disappointment with the book is that in Ender's Game this was obviously not Bean's story and the few interactions that did not feel authentic to Bean's character are connector points to Ender's story. Case in point, when Bean says he can't find his way back to the dorm, when Bean freaks out not understanding when Graff takes Ender to Commander school, and most importantly when Ender deducts that Bean is a great strategist on small projects but not good at grasping the whole picture. Card tries to smooth these over with excuses like Ender being fed doubts about Bean so he won't keep him busy, but it doesn't quite hit the mark. Either Ender isn't as brilliant as he's sold to be in not being able to understand Bean's genius or Bean was never intended to be as large of character as Ender's Shadow portrays. I just wish Card would have known Bean's story while he wrote Ender's so he could place better clues about Bean's story in the original story.

It seems like a lot of people want to defend Ender's Shadow by arguing that it's quite different from Ender's Game. It's actually very similar and, imho, not as good, and yet it would be wrong to dismiss it on those grounds. Like Ender's Game, this one is a page turner.

Wow.

I just cried while listening to an audio book. Even more amazing is that this book was the re-telling of a story I've already read, only told from a different perspective. Orson Scott Card is amazing. I'm now looking forward to the other books in the shadow series.

The audiobook was, like all others in this terrific series, fantastically well-executed. Full-cast reading, but no audio effects. Nothing is done to cheapen the conveyance of the story, but oh so much is done to elevate it beyond masterful storytelling into a beautiful work of art. Card himself asserts in his afterword that the audiobook version is the best presentation of his story, superior to reading the book in print or to the potentially forthcoming film version of Ender's Game, which will be a blend of this book and that one.

The pacing is excellent, the background is rich and engaging, and the characters are deeply complex and consistent. Elements of the story that are shared with Ender's Game aren't repetitive but rather simply familiar. It's a great, great story.

One minor glitch I noticed: At one point, Bean realizes the truth of something, then talks himself out of it. Later on, he suddenly believes it again without going through the mental deliberations to switch his opinion again. I got over it, but it needed a page or two of thinking to really be believed.

But that's it. The rest is amazing.

This is a hard book for me to review without getting angry, so bear with me. The review may also contain spoilers, so if you have not read this book or "Ender’s Game" you may want to skip over this review and just note I'm giving it a 2/5, and would probably drop that down to a 1.5 given the choice.
The original "Ender’s Game" novel is, in a word, extraordinary. Its one of those books almost everyone has read. Its translated in hundreds of languages. Its won many, many awards, and has won Orson Scott Card many awards as well. So you would think that revisiting "Ender’s Game" through the eyes of the rather important side-character Bean would be hard to mess up. Whole sections of the book are already written, as Bean and Ender experience the same situations together. All Card needed to do was fill in the blanks, toss in a bit of behind-the-scenes information on Ender through the eyes of a team member, and voila! Instant hit, especially with fan boys like me.

Unfortunately, thats not what happened. Instead, Card let the many years that passed between the writing of the original "Ender’s Game" short story, and the conceptualization of "Ender’s Shadow", shine through. He forgot what it meant to write a story based on a childhood dream during the time of Nixon, Carter, and Regan. Instead, he wrote as an upstanding citizen and devoted Latter Day Saint. Don't get me wrong, neither of these attributes are bad! They're just not where he was personally when he wrote "Ender’s Game", and this changes the whole tone of not just "Ender’s Shadow", but "Ender’s Game" as well!

In "Ender’s Game", Ender is manipulated by the world government into becoming the greatest space admiral, and the world's savior. Along the way, Ender knows he's being manipulated, and believes he understands the implications found within such manipulations. And even in the face of severe adversity, chooses to keep going because he knows its the right thing to do. He sees their deception and continues on, because even if the deception itself is wrong, their goal is just. And it coincides with his own reason for continuing on; to save his sister Valentine. Throughout the book, we also are given the perspectives of Generals Graff and Anderson, who speak constantly of the affects their manipulations are having on Ender, and the justifying reasons for their deception of someone so young. Graff is even put on trial at the end of the book for his involvement, and is deemed not guilty, in no small an example of the ends justifying the means.

"Ender’s Shadow" takes these machinations, these deceptions of both the children at Battle School and the general public, and throws it out. Instead of sticking with the idea of a government uncaringly using a very small segment of the population for the protection of the species as a whole, instead the government is painted as almost completely lost in how to proceed. Only the arrival of hyper-intelligent Bean saves the day. Younger even than Ender, Bean ends up manipulating Graff and Anderson, in order to achieve the results we saw in "Ender’s Game". The government wasn't smart enough to plan anything in advance, but Bean is! Not only that, but he continues to get smarter and smarter. By the end of the Bean series ("Shadow of the Giant"), he has long since past the point of believability. Nearly every problem Bean faces, he is able to solve with his unbelievably powerful brain without any outside help. This makes the books following "Ender’s Shadow" gradually get worse, but it all starts here.

The Bean series, beginning with "Ender’s Shadow", has me hesitant to read anything else Card has written in the Ender-verse. "A War of Gifts" seems to be yet another attempt by Card to re-write the "Ender's Game" tale by repainting it rosier than it once was. A recently-announced prequel to "Speaker for the Dead" makes me fear Card will start rewriting the rest of the series as well. And that makes me quite sad, because it will mean the scuttling of one of the greatest science fiction series around.

I'm not crying, you're crying! This book got me right in the feels. There are certainly some things I could criticize, number one being that 90% of the book is an exposition of Bean's thoughts. Which could at times get rather tedious. And all the same absurdities and difficulties with the plot that Ender's Game had... Nevertheless, I am glad I continued on with Ender's universe, and while I might take a break for now, I definitely plan to continue until I have finished all of the Ender books.

Absolutely fantastic!

This is a “parallel novel” to Ender’s Game (which is one of my favorite books of all time). So what is a “parallel novel?” Just what it sounds like! In Ender’s Game, we meet many of Ender’s fellow students in Battle School. In this book, Ender’s Shadow, we follow the life of another student, Bean, who is one of Ender’s friends in the original book. We are briefly introduced to Bean’s life on Earth before he is called to Battle School, and the book ends in approximately the time/place as Ender’s Game… so is it the same story? No. Not at all.

As in Ender’s Game, this story occurs after our solar system has been invaded by “Buggers” – ant-like aliens that came extremely close to wiping humans out. The Buggers were eventually repelled but are likely to be gathering their strength for a new “final” invasion.

For this reason, humans have – for decades – being combing Earth for the best and the brightest children, hoping to train (starting at a very young age) those children to be the brilliant military commanders that will be necessary to defend Earth from the coming attack.

Bean is a street urchin, small, malnourished and hanging on to life by focusing his extreme intellect on survival. Bean is a lost soul – until he comes up with a plan for civilizing life on the streets of Rotterdam, and is discovered by Sister Carlotta, a nun searching through the sometimes-feral and always-starving street urchins of the world in the hopes of finding a promising candidate for Battle School and raising him/her out of the mire. Bean agrees to go to Battle School – not because he has to, but because it is a matter of survival. On Earth, he has incurred the murderous wrath of larger, older street urchin.

The character of Bean is brilliantly developed and explored. (Much like the disagreements between Phantom of the Opera fans between “Phantom” fans and “Raoul” fans, there are those who – after reading both books – are “Ender” fans versus “Bean” fans.) Better still, we are given a completely different perspective on the circumstances and developments that occur while both Bean and Ender are in Battle School.

Both books can be read as stand-alone novels, so someone reading only Ender’s Game has the full story, as does someone only reading Ender’s Shadow. At the same time, there is no tedious repetition if someone reads both. Instead there is an enrichment, one by the other, which portrays, in the end, not just the full story (which can be gained by either book) but a “fuller” story. Fabulously done.

Another enjoying part of this book – especially if you have read Ender’s Game first – is that the story telling/writing in this book is more mature. This makes sense when you realize that this book was written about 20 years after Ender’s Game.

I will read this book again and again! Highly recommended.

Another spectacular sci-fi, adventure experience Orson Scott Card brings to life by expanding on the events of his much-beloved, Ender's Game.

The story of Ender's Shadow unfolds from the eyes and mind of Bean who is much younger and smaller than Ender (Andrew Wiggin) and in his own words, Bean believes to be Ender Wiggin, "only smarter and less likable, the better strategist but the weaker commander".

I thoroughly enjoyed the backdrop of Rotterdam slums, where Brean grew up before getting selected for battle school.

Apart from being a compliment or commentary of Ender's Game, Ender's Shadow succeeds at setting up the ground for the raging war on Earth, or the aftermath of space/bugger wars. We saw glimpses of what is to come in Ender's Game through the eyes of Locke and Demosthenes.

Overall, I thought Ender's Shadow is equally as-good-as Ender's Game, if not better in some ways though Ender's Game is still my favorite of the series.

Additionally what I think would have been a real treat is that if we got one ultimate 1000+ pages book telling the story of two likely heroes (Ender and Bean) rather than 2 separate books, because I Ender's Shadow truly "completes" Ender's Game. A must-read, both Ender's Game, and Ender's Shadow.