Bean's shadow grows in second novel about baby Napoleon
Written: Jan 23 '01 (Updated Jan 23 '01)
|
Product Rating:
|
|
|
Pros: Wonderful writing, great characters
Cons: Suffers from middle of the trilogyitis
The Bottom Line: This is a very good novel -- but not the best -- by one of science fiction's most gifted writers.
|
|
|
| bgardner's Full Review: Orson Scott Card - Shadow of the Hegemon Books |
The story of Bean continues with SHADOW OF THE HEGEMON, the second novel in the companion series to Orson Scott Card’s 5-volume set about the life of Ender Wiggin. (NOTE: If you have not read any of the Ender novels, most especially ENDER’S GAME, or have not read ENDER’S SHADOW, you don’t want to read this book. You may not want to even read this review, as it will confuse you horridly.)
Bean, the smallest of the Battle School kids, is growing up back on Earth as the novel begins. His former classmates and cohorts in Ender’s “jeesh” (inner circle) also are at home, enjoying some time off or moving ahead in the militaries of their home nations. But things are deceptively quiet. Unknown to Bean and the others, Achilles, the twisted villain of ENDER’S SHADOW, is alive, well and freshly escaped from the mental asylum to which he was consigned in the first book of this series.
Achilles is creating a military empire, with himself at the heart, and realizes that his greatest enemy is those other baby Napoleons who were accepted to Battle School. He sets the kidnapping of the others into motion and also looses assassins on Bean, the most dangerous kid of all.
Bean finds himself the last of Ender’s command circle still at large and goes into hiding with Sister Carlotta, the nun who brought both Bean and Achilles from the streets of Rotterdam to the halls of power. Bean is forced into an alliance with Peter Wiggin, Ender’s older brother and a political genius to rival his baby brother’s military acumen. This is not an alliance based on mutual goals, but mutual need. Peter needs someone to thwart Achilles military machine and Bean needs someone with the political weight to get him an army he can wield to stop his nemesis. And, all the while, Bean is really playing a different game – all he wants to do is rescue Petra, the young girl who was his first friend in Battle School, from Achilles.
As with all Card novels, the writing is magnificent. He is able to create believable characters, build and maintain suspense, weave intricately elaborate plots and do it all in a style so smooth that the only threat to continued story movement is your repeated desire to reread passages just so you can appreciate the way he writes. Card’s use of dialog is especially good. The characters’ voices are unique and instantly recognizable.
This book does, however, suffer somewhat in the story department. Stuff happens, but the best clearly is still to come. As this is obviously the middle book of a trilogy (perhaps longer than three books), it slightly drags in places. We should not look on SHADOW OF THE HEGEMON as a novel. It is, rather, the middle part of a very long novel, which do tend to drag somewhat in the middle.
This installment ends where it begins – in the middle of things – and just like its predecessor, promises a successor.
Recommended:
Yes
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
bgardner
|
|
Member: Bruce Gardner
Location: Paducah, KY
Reviews written: 84
Trusted by: 21 members
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.