Book Review: Ender's Shadow

This week's book review is on Ender's Shadow, a science fiction novel by Orson Scott Card. For those of you who have read the classic Ender's Game by the same author, the book covers the same time period from a different perspective.

While Ender's Game is told from the point of Ender, a talented child with the trial of military leadership thrust upon him, Ender's Shadow follows the story of Bean, an orphaned child from Rotterdam who joins Battle School as a method of escape.

Battle School is located on a space station, and its sole purpose is to train children found to possess the aptitudes to excel as commanders in the International Fleet, a military force driven to defend against the Formics, a hostile alien race.

Ender's Shadow is my favorite piece of science fiction writing. The concept is intriguing, and the end somewhat surprising. Card's writing is excellent, even more so here than in Ender's Game, as Ender's Shadow was written many years later.

However, the single most important thing defining Ender's Shadow as superior to Ender's Game in my mind is the nature of the protagonist. Bean is driven and moves the plot forward both through his own brilliance and as a result of true motivation. Ender, on the other hand, fights constantly against what is happening, even when there is no clear reason to do so, and advances only as a result of his natural talent.

Beyond even that, Bean is a truly multidimensional character, while Ender is flat and defined virtually only by the conflict between his talent and desire to rebel against the establishment at Battle School and within the International Fleet.

(Important Note: Ender is a more well developed character in the rest of the Ender's Game series, but in the first book he has little depth to his character. The other books in the series are excellent, and Ender's Game is in no way bad, I just feel Ender's Shadow to be the better book by a large margin.)

Anyways. Ender's Shadow has an interesting concept, a great protagonist, and an excellent author. I don't think I could suggest another science fiction book to anyone before this one, with the possible exception of one or two Asimov works.