(Written) Ender's Shadow -- review
Excession
* WARNING -MAJOR- SPOILERS for ENDER'S GAME *
No real spoilers for _Ender's Shadow_
A Book Review by David Andrew Clayton
Review Copyright April 2000, David Andrew Clayton.
Orson Scott Card's _Ender's Game_ has received quite a lot of
attention over the years; people dismissing the novel as a quaint
attempt to Make More Money from the 'quite decent' short story of the
same name, people dismissing the entire story as 'an exercise in
cruelty to children', and various other accusations about Mr Card's
religious beliefs.
I *liked* _Ender's Game_, I liked it a lot. I picked it up 'on spec'
from the Australian National University Co-op bookshop, and was very
impressed/moved by the story. The sequels that followed (_Speaker for
the Dead_, _Xenocide_, _Children of the Mind_) were nothing like the
original story, and were 'disappointing' to people who expected more
of the Battle School shenanigans.
Card has succombed to either public requests, or a push by his editor,
and written a 'parallel' novel, centred on 'Bean' from the original
book. It takes part in the same timeframe as _Ender's Game_,
focussing on the early childhood of Bean, his rise to Battle School,
and his activities there with Andrew "Ender" Wiggin.
The book is pretty well congruent with the original story, although
told from a different perspective, you get more insight into the
chicanery of the IF heirarchy, and the political machinations going on
outside Battle School.
Bean's character starts out young, and smart, and gets smarter as the
story progresses. I found the 'smart kid' syndrome to be a bit
underwhelming -- the cognitive leaps and bounds that Bean makes,
whilst his emotional abilities remain almost moribund, struck me as
being unbalanced.
The degree of 'happy circumstance' is just too trite; my suspension of
disbelief was shattered on a number of occasions by certain clumsy
coincidences regarding Bean and his chance encounters with various
other characters. Also distressingly perverse was the inelegant
'hacking' performed within Battle School, and the idiotic policies of
the IF administration who 'let' Bean into the system with almost total
free reign over the data -- as a computer person, that just didn't
strike me as being a valid course of action; perhaps I'm a little too
close to the computer security side of reality to let that kind of
breach slip.
Some interesting insights into how Battle School works, and a
disturbing future description of an overcrowded Rotterdam, plus the
wierd inclusion of a catholic nun, who appears to have way more
resources at her fingertips than most governments.
The book finishes at the same time as the original, with the
destruction of the Bugger's homeworld, which we already knew about
from the original novel.
A toasted cheese and tomato sandwich (with yukky "soapy" cheese) on
the ever bizarre Sid and Nancy scale.
%T Ender's Shadow
%A Orson Scott Card
%C Britain
%D 1999
%G ISBN 1-85723-975-X
%P 380pp
%O Trade Paperback, $AU24.95
%I Orbit Books
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