Shadow of the Giant (Shadow Saga)

The Ender verse and Card just keep on giving! Another great story that’s ties right into the the original series. I loved the twists and turns through out. Card has done a fantastic job with character development yet again.

Shadow of the Giant stands along with Ender's Game and Speaker of the Dead as Orson Scott Card's best work in Enderverse, complete with interesting characters and an engaging plot. Like the previous books in the `Shadow' series, Shadow of the Giant continues to follow the life of Bean, the now giant, not quite human, who served as Ender's second in Battle School, at least as retold in Ender's Shadow. Readers who have followed Bean through to this fourth and perhaps final book will not be disappointed. Several factors work in `Giant's favor. Card deemphasizes his juvenile and often torturous read of international relations in general and military strategy in particular. Readers who in the last book found themselves hitting their heads wondering why any nation's military would behave as irrationally as they did, particularly regarding the strange archaic idea of national status strictly as a function of number of square miles controlled, will find some relief. Card here returns to what made Ender's Game, Ender's Shadow, and Speaker for the Dead excellent reads, namely focusing on characters and their internal lives. Particularly noteworthy as he looms large over all of the books in both series is Card's exploration of the motivation and conflict for Ender's brother Peter, who here at last ceases to be a two-dimensional Genghis Khan and instead becomes someone readers can relate to and with whom we can sympathize. Some readers may take offense at the writer's political diatribes rather inelegantly folded into this work, particular his rants against Islam. Again, I took it about as seriously as the other political and military thoughts peppered throughout the series, most of which either lack sense or lack nuance. Card writes well and thus readers do well to focus on plot and character that he develops instead of spending much time attacking his thoughts in other areas. While Card leaves open a glimmer of potential for continuing this story, he also gives the reader something that has eluded all his work since Ender's Game, a satisfying ending that does not require another novel. For this alone, fans of Card's are sure to enjoy this work.

As usual with Orson, this is a very thoughtful and complex book. I think this is probably my favorite of the Shadow sub-series but definitely not my favorite Orson Scott Card book. I find his exploration of the political future of Earth to be quite fascinating; everything from an isolated and therefore almost powerless United States to an uneasy alliance of the Muslim Nations. Very interesting an well thought out. His development of the erstwhile villain Peter Wiggin into a man of peace is also fascinating; I always like it when characters become multi-dimensional in a book. Overall, another gem in Card's crown. The same excellent writing that we have come to expect of Mr. Card; he is imho one of the great writers of this genre!

Personally, I like this the best of the Shadow books. I've always been on my soapbox about great Card characters, and SotG is full of them. It completes Bean's story, it fills the hole left by Ender in between Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead, it makes Ender's jeeshmates more than just ancillary characters in EG, and most important, it brings the story full circle. The Shadow books have always been a stand-along series, and still are, but it brilliantly brings everything back to the beginning. When I finished SotG, I shelved it and grabbed my copy of Ender's Game, eager to start over again. My only criticism is that Card spends a little too much time following the exploits of Virlomi and Alai and India. These are great characters, sure, and I'm interested in what they're doing, but these two received more focus than any other Battle School children, who are equally as compelling. Spread it out a bit. Besides, if I'm being honest, at this point in the series you care about Bean, Petra, and Peter. Too much exposition on other characters starts to get distracting and a little frustrating. The book is a series of goodbyes to characters you've loved for years, whether you started with Ender's Game or with Ender's Shadow. It a worthy end to a series that has evolved more in terms of plot and characters than I have seen in most other story arcs. It effortlessly takes you to a conclusion that you've seen coming for four books now, but still feels fresh and unexpected and ultimately moving.

For all of those who disliked Shadow Puppets, well here is the reason that made that book was necessary. Book eight, I thought, was great. It had a massive amount of political intrigue and included basically every battle schooler you ever heard of in the story. And finally we had a book that was absent of the swiftly aging antics of Achilles. My only real criticism of the book is the same one I had for Puppets, and that is that Card is not so great at writing love story material. This has led to something I find sad, which is the destruction of one of my favorite characters a.k.a. Petra. Every scene Petra is in is a love type scene, or a scene with someone else talking about love. I found myself basically skipping these chapters, as they were fairly tiresome to read through and after the first one they were all the same, never really advancing the story. One other thing that annoyed me somewhat was Card's tendency, in this book, to explain everything that had happened in the past, or over explain aspects of the politics going on. I would have liked that he assumed that first off those who were reading this book had read the previous seven, and that they were somewhat keyed into the political situations going on in the story. I found that he explained way too much, almost to a point of some paragraphs making me feel like I was in grammar school again. But this is a genuinely great part of the series. I'm not sure that this is the end, as their are still ways he could continue with Bean or with any of the other Battle Schoolers. But if it is the last one, it was a great one to end on. The Last chapter was amazing, really something a fan will love. I actually find myself being sad at the end, I sure hope this isn't the last one, as these are among my most favorite books to read. No kidding I read the last 200 pages in 2 hours. It's just one of those books.

In Shadow of the Giant, the eighth book in the Ender series, Orson Scott Card concludes the "parallel" series of books featuring Julian Delphiki, or Bean, as he is better known. What started as Card's attempt to look at his science fiction classic, Ender's Game, from someone else's perspective, culminates in this fourth, masterful novel of Bean and the others who fought with Ender in Ender's Game. Bean has married Petra, who also fought with Ender, and is working with Peter Wiggin, Ender's older brother, to help unify the Earth after the havoc wreaked by Achilles in the earlier Bean novels. He is also looking for the children who were stolen from him as embryos and have been secretly implanted in women across the Earth. Bean and the rest of Ender's "Jeesh" are being offered the chance to start colonies in space rather than remain on Earth and be used by nations as pawns in wars of conquest and aggression. Card again does a masterful job of presenting differing sides to issues and forcing the reader to think hard about the choices his characters are making. This is the real beauty of Card's writing - it's not so much science fiction, as it is philosophy, religion, and military strategy. Shadow of the Giant starts slow as it tries to allow new readers to catch up to what has gone before. It quickly heats up, though, as things are set in motion throughout Earth by the actions of those who fought with Ender, Peter Wiggin, and the old military teachers from Ender's Game. I was especially moved by the last 50 or so pages through the decisions, words, and actions of the novel's main characters - Bean, Petra, Peter, and even Hyrum Graff and Mazer Rackham. Each of the novels in this series has left me wanting more about these characters - which is the mark of a great writer. While it seems this series has concluded, I noticed a couple of threads left dangling that could be picked up should Card ever decide to return to Ender's and Bean's world. I hope that Card now has time to go back to work on the next volume of his other great series, the Tales of Alvin Maker.