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Kyle Johnson's Reviews > Ender's Shadow
Ender's Shadow
by
by
** spoiler alert **
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.
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.
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Your issues with this novel are similar to the issues I remember having with it. I remember feeling each situation was manipulated in retrospect to make it seem like Bean was more important to the story. It made the entire story very contrived for me. Looking back, it also completely undermines the Ender if you look back on Ender's Game.
It just seemed like an excuse to nag and lecture the long suffering reader who just wants a good story and not a sermon.