Product Description

Orson Scott Card is one of the world's bestselling SF authors, and the award-winning Ender saga is one of the best-loved series in the genre. ENDER'S SHADOW is the first volume in a new Ender series. Returning to the time of Ender's Game, ENDER'S SHADOW follows the incredible story of one of Ender Wiggin's fellow pupils at Battle School. Compelling, compulsive reading, ENDER'S SHADOW is certain to thrill all fans of the original series and attract many new readers. Look out for more information on this book and others on the Orbit website at www.orbitbooks.co.uk

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #24892 in Books
• Published on: 2000-08-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 559 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Ender's Shadow is being dubbed as a parallel novel to Orson Scott Card's Hugo and Nebula Award-winning book 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 two-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 co-writer 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 capitalise 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, Amazon.com

Review
'The emotional punch is still as powerful as ever. Excellent.' SFX 'Haunting, compulsive, urgently readable...Story-telling genius' INTERZONE 'Certain to be one of the most sought-after books of the year' LOCUS 'Full of surprises...Intense is the word for Orson Scott Card's ENDER'S GAME' NEW YORK TIMES

Manfully resisting the temptation to rewrite his successful 1985 child-warrior saga, Ender's Game, Card instead offers a parallel yam, told from the point of view of Ender Wiggin's lieutenant, Bean. As a two-year-old starving on the streets of Rotterdam, supergenius Bean survives by civilizing the merciless street gangs and bullies around him, but he can't prevent his greatest enemy, Achilles, from murdering his only friend, Poke. Recognizing Bean's extraordinary abilities, recruiter Sister Carlotta sends him to Battle School. Here, aboard an orbiting space station, exceptional children like Bean learn the military skills necessary to fight the insect-like alien Buggers. Handicapped by his doll-like stature, Bean nevertheless excels in the war games, though he doesn't understand the legendary Ender Wiggin's ability to inspire loyalty and devotion. Carlotta, meanwhile, discovers that Bean's extraordinary intellect is the result of illegal genetic manipulation; the tradeoff for intelligence is that he'll keep growing until he dies - at the age of 25. Bean, unimpressed with his teachers and their selection methods, puts together his own team of rejects and misfits; commanded by Ender, they're invincible. But the pressure steadily increases on the children, with ever more frequent battle-games and increasingly complex scenarios. Bean alone figures out that these battles aren't computer simulations but the real thing, conducted by instantaneous communicator. If they lose, the human species will perish. Card is always at his best, as here, when he's writing about children: an absorbing, near-flawless performance that, while fully intelligible, should send everyone scurrying to reread the original. (Kirkus Reviews)

INTERZONE
'Haunting, compulsive, urgently readable...Storytelling genius'

Customer Reviews

Brilliant novel
I loved "Ender's Game" when I read it as a girl - and then reading "Ender's Shadow" 15 years later, I am amazed at how brilliant it supplements Ender's Game.

It's the same story, but with a very different angle. We follow Bean and learn of his childhood as an urchin in Amsterdam and how he is recruited to Battle School and fight alone, side by side with Ender - against the buggers, Battle School and himself.

Card succeeds in giving a thorough and interesting insight of the "backstage" life of Battle School and the mechanics - and not least of Bean pulling strings and trying to survive and save the world in his own way.

An excellent complimentary book to Enders Game
The reviews here are decidedly mixed - apparently a book you will either love or hate. Personally, I'm one of the ones who loved it.

It is more or less the story of Ender's Game from Bean's point of view. In terms of a novel unusual approach, and an engrossing read - even though you know the story - I couldn't put the book down.

It's hard not to go on, without giving anything away, so I'll stop there! Very highly recommended from me anyway!

Awful
If you read this book in isolation from Enders Game (as in having never read it and never intending to read it) then it's probably okay. Not a bad Sci-Fi book with some interesting ideas.

But most people won't read this in isolation. In-fact I doubt that as many as 10% of the people that read this book have not already read Enders Game. And therein lies the problem.

If this book is read after Enders Game then it pretty much ruins that story. Instead of Ender being the lead of the time and the one who can do and see things that no one else can, he becomes a bit of a dullard when put in context with this book. Suddenly his genius is mediocre and the only thing he has is his ability to inspire. Hmmmm.

The worst thing about this book is that clearly OSC decided to go back to the root of his success (his one really excellent book, "Enders Game") and see if he could write more stories surrounding this and some of the other characters. That he wrote the book in such a way as to undermine and ruin the original book is where he has gone wrong. We all realise that speak for the dead was a completely different style of book, and Xenocide / children of the mind were actualy quite poor. What had made Ender an interesting and engaging character in the first book didn't work as an adult.

As the creator of Ender he's obviously entitled to re-write his story. It's just a shame that he did it so badly and ruined the original in doing so.

Very poor OSC. Must try harder.