Shadow Puppets

We pick up where we left off in Shadow of the Hegemon. Bean married Petra and they are trying to have children, ones without Bean's mutated genes. As an aside, I found Petra's fawning behavior a little unsettling considering how much of a badass she was in Shadow of the Hegemon. Did love make her mushy? Where was the smart warrior from before? Anyway, back to the characters. Achilles is somehow still terrorizing the universe despite losing his most of his backers. Peter Wiggin is trying to unite the planet Earth for survival. Peter's parents insist on going with him everywhere (and are hilarious, I might add). A few other battle school grads pop up in interesting places with even more interesting roles.
The geopolitical parts of Shadow show more Puppets were more interesting than the didactic Mormon sections. I appreciated the return of Alai, an old battle schoolmate, despite his convoluted character. I think it is safe to say this was my least favorite of the Shadow series. show less

It's hard to believe that Shadow Puppets came from the same author as two of my favorite books, Ender's Game and Pastwatch. Card's characters behave so oddly that I was frequently jolted out of the story. Bean and Petra fawning over each other? Petra desiring Bean's babies? The latter is somewhat touching if shown as an internal monologue, but no, she can't stop saying it to his face. WTF? How old are they? I don't care how intellectually gifted you are. Nobody sane acts like this. Orson Scott Card's was not on his game this time around, and I think the major culprit is that he let his conservative Mormon beliefs slip through the cracks too much. Was it intentional? Card is a brilliant writer and a huge contributor to the annals of show more science fiction lore, but if you pull back the curtain too far, reveal the storyteller too much as what happened in Shadow Puppets, you risk plainly seeing a man with unsettling views on abortion, marriage and homosexuality.

Side note: The audiobook performers have been mostly the same since the start of the Shadow series, but their pompous tones have never been more off-putting than now. I fault the writing over the recitation. Everyone sounds so smug it's irritating. Since I am determined to finish this series, the best I could manage was to grit my teeth and power through. show less

The magical battle school children and Achilles are at it again. The character of Achilles has jumped the shark several books ago and is even more ridiculous in Shadow Puppets, succeeding in basically kidnapping the world government for himself, despite the fact that he has no support left anywhere in the world.

The geopolitical stuff with the war in Indochina is fairly interesting (now the Muslim coalition is entering the fray), as are Peter Wiggin's attempts to reclaim the Hegemony for himself. However, that is about all that is worth it in this book.

The rest Card dedicates mostly to espousing the Mormon point of view on life. Mainly, to marry and have as many children as possible is the ultimate achievement of any human being and show more apparently even gay scientists who have been single all their lives eventually come to this realization. As does everyone else who is a good guy in this series. Also, non-implanted, possibly unfertilized eggs in a tube are children, in case you didn't know.

Since this is the case, battleschoolers Bean and Petra are of course compelled to make some babies, like good little Mormons. Despite the fact that they are two of the most brilliant minds left on Earth, they go about it in such an unbelievably incompetent way that the embryos are kidnapped from under their nose in a completely transparent heist. You have exactly one guess who is responsible for this.

It seems to me that with every book Card gives up a little on making the series a well-rounded science fiction story and focuses a bit more on preaching his religious believes. At this rate two books down the line we will probably have a transcription of the Book of Mormon. show less

I read this book in one day (granted, while travelling) so it was good enough to not want to put it down. While it wasn't amazing I am definitely interested in the characters and their arcs. However, I did feel that the writing was a bit heavy handed, childish, and preachy at times. I'm not reading it for the author's craft (if you want that, go run get The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss) but to see where everyone ends up. Ultimately this is the 7th (? wow) book I've read by OSC and it feels like things are getting weaker. However, I'll probably stick it out and read the next one.

The Shadow series follows Bean and is a ton of fun. A worthy follow-up to Ender's Game, and a great opportunity to see what happens with the members of Ender's Jeesh, I'd recommend these books to anyone who enjoyed Ender's Game (and how can someone not like Ender's Game?).

Before reading this book (or, the 100 pages I read before I had to stop), Orson Scott Card was one of my favorite writers. Now, I intend to never read one of his books again. I had always known that he was outspoken about certain opinions which I disagreed with, but that didn't matter; good writing is good writing, regardless of who it's coming from. But this time he infuses his anti-homosexuality into the story, with (at least) an entire chapter basically amounting to propaganda.

Better than Shadow of the Hegemon. Turns out having some plot to go along with people thinking stuff helps.