This is a new novel in the works, by Orson Scott Card. It's the sequal to Ender's Shadow, making it the 6th book in the Ender saga. This one tells the tale of the friends and comrades of Enders who were left on Earth, while he traveled the the space colonies. It also, of course, tells of his brother, Peter,'s rise to power. The first 5 chapters are on Orson Scott Card's web page: www.hatrack.com .

Other books in the Ender's Game Series

Shadow of the Hegemon proved to be just as engaging and well written as the other Ender books. Orson Scott Card shows his wordy, genius stuff, once again.

The plot revolves around Bean, Petra, Achilles, and of course the future Hegemon, Peter. He also brings in several Battle School graduates to spice up the plot. Card goes into a detailed, literary game of Risk. I have learned more about military strategy reading these books than the texts they supply you in history class.

Military briefings aside, Card used his usual flair for making you see the insides of his characters as well as the outward ramifications of their actions.

How many more novels can he write to add to this series? The greatest thing about them is they keep bringing up new perspectives of the same story. The story of Ender and the world he is born into is such a great universe!

Now, Mr. Card, how about a book focusing on Valentine?

This book was a lot shorter than I had expected. Having managed to get through Xenocide and Children of the Mind, both Ender's Shadow and Shadow of the Hegemon have been rather short.

This may be because the idea is fresher and much more concise in Card's mind.

In any case, it was fairly sharp, though some of it was managed far too easily, in my mind. We've moved a long way from the Worthing books.

Shadow of the Hegemon precedes two more books (which have not been fully named yet), one about Bean's final days, and another about Peter Wiggin's control of the earth as Hegemon.

Warning: Contains a few minor spoilers

This book is in my opinion the worst book in the Ender series (which is not much of a put down) for a number of reasons. The biggest reason is that it lacked the depth of emotion of the earlier books. It did not really keep me wondering about the future like the "Speaker for the Dead" trilogy, and it lacked the despair of "Ender's Game" and "Ender's Shadow." Although it did have a lot of interesting pieces (which I won't mention here for those of you who have yet to read it) it also had a lot of other problems. For starters, Peter was not the vast hero he was made out to be at the end of "Ender's Game" and instead seemed more like a typical megelomaniac attending college. He also ended up with only a few loyal troops at his disposal and no real power, instead of the leader of a now united world as was implied in "Ender's Game." Also, Achilles continued his way too dramtatic changes from "Ender's Shadow" to become a would be world ruler. Are we to believe that the two most powerful nations on earth (Second Warsaw Pact and China) in the book would place their faith and their armies in the hands of a thirteen year old just because he attended Battle School? This is still a good book by Orson Scott Card, that is a good read for excitement rather than contemplation. My suggestion is borrow it from a friend or library, this adventure isn't worth the money.

Shadow of the Hegemon by Orson Scott Card
Published January 1, 2001

So you've just finished reading Ender's Shadow. Ender Wiggin, having defeated the Buggers--er, Formics--once and for all, has left our solar system with his sister Valentine for the first extrasolar colony. Their older brother, Peter, is still hiding his identity on the nets behind the personas of Locke and Demosthenes as he manipulates global politics. Ender's generals, including the superintelligent Bean, a.k.a. Julian Delphiki, have all gone back to their native countries to try and resume life as best they can.

Oh, and Russia has just tried and failed to take over the global government established to fight the Formics. They want to try again. Toward that end, they kidnap Bean's adversary, a brilliant and charismatic boy known as Achilles who just barely qualifies as a student of the Battle School. See, Achilles was thrown out of Battle School when Bean tricked him into confessing to seven premeditated murders. He's not too valuable as a military general, but he's very, very good at thinking three or four moves ahead of his benefactors.

And so it is that, about a year after all the Battle School children have returned to Earth, ten of the students who commanded fleets directly under Ender are kidnapped within hours of each other, and Bean's family's vacation home is destroyed. Fortunately, Bean is smart enough to get his family out of the house before it happened and identify the kidnappers as Russians working for Achilles. There's only so much he can do for now, though, since (a) Achilles will certainly try to kill him again and (b) he has no idea exactly where in Russia his friends are.

By the time he locates them, they've already been evacuated, with only Petra Arkanian--an Armenian and one of the few girls ever to enter Battle School--traveling with her captor to India, Pakistan, and China as Achilles makes allies in every major Asian country and sets in motion World War III.


Unlike Card's previous novels in the Enderverse, the "Shadow" novels are less about science fiction than international politics and military action. This trilogy (or quartet, if you include Ender's Shadow) centers around both Bean and Peter Wiggin, the future Hegemon of all the earth but who for now is still a teenager living at home with his parents. Peter has to somehow stop every major national government from pursuing their opportunistic conquests and get them to agree, one by one, to stop fighting each other and form a single world government. Only a unified, peaceful government can colonize space and ensure that humanity is too widespread to ever be wiped out as the Formics (allegedly) were.

That's the greater story. The smaller story is, of course, about Bean, who does not yet know the whole truth about how he was genetically engineered for nearly unlimited intelligence in exchange for an early death. Bean has just discovered his family, as well as his emotional bond to Petra, and he'll do anything to keep Achilles from taking them all away from him. Stopping World War III is something of an afterthought.

Needless to say, Bean, Petra and Peter all have somewhat different ideas as to how this all ought to be done. As if being a teenager wasn't hard enough....


This book is preceded by Ender's Shadow and followed by Shadow Puppets and Shadow of the Giant.

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