When you're lost, you can't get any loster.
I read Ender’s Shadow because I needed a book to read for the Bullying Prevention newsletter and Ender’s Game was recommended reading. Three days before the article was due, my husband let me know that he had loaned his copy of Ender’s Game to our nephew who was visiting from out of town. Yikes!! What to do, what to do? Husband said Ender’s Shadow should work just fine for what I needed…maybe even better than my original plan.
He was right.
I read only the first portion of the book and had enough material (along with some tricky memory work and a compilation guide to Orson Scott Card’s universe from the library) to get me this article for the newsletter. Whew!
After, I got the newsletter completed, I zoomed through the book in another two days. Could not stay away from it. But, we’ll get to that later. First, let’s get to the…
Gist of the Story (Some Spoilers Ahead)
So, the author says in his foreword that this is a companion book to Ender’s Game and then goes on to say, not convincingly enough, that you can read these two books in any order. Disagree. I would strongly suggest you first read Ender’s Game and then read Ender’s Shadow. The author does some very, very impressive juxtaposing and filling in of gaps that you will most want to compare. But, you will have to know exactly what you are comparing to do so.
Story begins with Bean in Rotterdam living on the streets. He is abnormally small but also abnormally bright. He sees relationships and social situations with a very logical eye and therefore can envision how to manipulate those situations for his gain. He gets into a ‘gang’ of youngsters led by a girl named Poke scavenging for food. Bean soon realizes that their group needs a bully to survive and forcefully enlists and lame 12-year old named Achilles. He does the job, although he holds a grudge against Poke and Bean. Achilles kills Poke; Bean thinks Poke sacrificed herself for him.
Bean is discovered by Sister Carlotta who is looking for children for battle school. Because of his intelligence, he is accepted. Sister Carlotta researches Bean’s genetic history for the rest of the story. Very interesting.
At battle school, Bean spies on the teachers, captures passwords and refuses to play the psychological game. He helps his toon (short for platoon) leaders win battles by employing inventive strategies. He longs to become a toon leader himself but is never promoted. He seems to have a problem making friends.
The one friend he does make is Nikolai. I won’t spoil anything here about how that turns out (but if you read further, you can probably deduce it.).
Bean avoids Ender as much as possible, until the teacher’s determine that Ender is going to have is own Dragon Army. Interesting note, Bean decides on the recruits for this army because of studying historical battle strategies and the student’s records (without permission). Of course, Bean is in Dragon Army and here we see some creative overlap with Ender’s Game.
Ender takes of to go fight the Buggers (without knowing that is really what he is doing, of course) and Bean rallies the troops left behind, dismantling the scoreboard system for battles. He is made the leader of Rabbit Army and Achilles shows up at battle school. There is a brief confrontation and things work out for the best. If you have already read Ender’s Game you know how it all turns out.
The book fizzles a bit at the end and we lose Bean’s great perspective on life as focus switches to Ender. But I suppose it is like that with any Captain Kirk and Spock relationship. No one celebrates Spock.
First Lines, Last Words
“You think you’ve found somebody, so suddenly my program gets the ax?”
“Welcome home, little brother,” said Nikolai, “I told you they were nice.”
Quotable
…when you start out completely lost, it’s hard to get loster. ~pg. 66
“[Suicide] is the only way powerless person can find to make everybody else look away from his shame.” ~pg. 287
“Unbelievers always want other people to act like Christians.” ~pg. 175
Book Rating
Overall Rating 4.5/5
Beside the Bed – 4.5 Although I love sci-fi, especially sci-fi that is more about ‘real’ life problems than real life actually is, I worry about the stigma I get by issuing too much knowledge about space stuff and media.
Sleepless for the Story – 4.9 Like I said, couldn’t stay away.
Regifting this Read – 4.1 Hard to regift a particular genre, although I believe even sci-fi haters would enjoy this whole series of books. I did!
For more on how book ratings work, see the book ratings chart.
My name is Britty and I'm chief bottle-washer at this site. I'm a book-lover, student and freelance writer when I'm not being a mom of three and wife of one.
