The Shadow of the Hegemon

Shadow of the Hegemon was undoubtedly entertaining, but I felt there was something missing from the book when it stands alone. Key events for the overall story occur, such as Petra's kidnapping, Achilles' accension to power and the first interactions between Peter Wiggin and Bean. But everything seems to move so slowly, and is long foreshadowed/signalled/repeated thus reducing its impact.

Alternatively, the new setting of futuristic Earth after multiple Ender books and this novel's predecessor set in space is refreshing, and credit to Card for the international conflicts which occur in a logical and well-researched manner. Hopefully the sequel propels the story forward.

I enjoyed this book and finding out about events on earth after the war with the buggers.

I expected things to be farther along at the end based on the title however.

So far I'm enjoying the shadow series a lot more than ender series apart from ender's game. These books have felt more in the style of the first.

Hegemon leaves the confines of Battle School to enter a world of international politics, and as much as I love international politics, I was glad Card didn't abandon the characters and character-level plot. Bean grows, Petra grows, Peter grows (though he's relatively ancillary–he's neither protagonist nor antagonist), Achilles...doesn't really grow. In Ender's Shadow, for a few paragraphs, we actually saw into Achilles' mind. In this book, we see him act and others' evaluations of his behavior, but they add nothing new to his personality–in fact they fail to draw on the peak we got in the previous book.

Over all, this book is similar in style to the previous two and added an aspect I very much enjoy (high-level politics, not just individuals bickering and seeking power), but I didn't enjoy it quite as much. Achilles did not interest me, and the genius of Bean, Peter, etc. occasionally felt unbelievable to me when applied to human behavior rather than strategy. There's a point where Bean insists Achilles would have at least three back-ups–why at least three? I don't care how smart Achilles is or how well Bean knows him. Humans make decisions far too arbitrarily and options are far too varied to be predicted with that degree of specificity. Attempts to display the intelligence of the characters ranged from really good to kind of terrible.

Though not as good as Ender's Game or Ender's Shadow, this is definitely worth reading if you loved the previous two in this thread.