Shadow of the Giant

This is the 8th of Orson Scott Card's Ender series.

1. Ender's Game
2. Speaker for the Dead
3. Xenocide
4. Children of the Mind
5. Ender's Shadow
6. Shadow of the Hegemon
7. Shadow Puppets
8. Shadow of the Giant


The first book catapulted Card into his present career. Warner Bros. has already optioned Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow. If only they can make up their mind who to use to write the screenplay. Hopefully the guys who did Troy can deliver on this soon.


Ender's Game is the story of Ender Wiggin. A child prodigy, separated from his parents, brother and sister. Taken to Battle School, a space station where the brightest children on earth are schooled in military strategies and tactics.

Earth had discovered that they are not alone. It barely survived the first wave of alien assault, and are desperately preparing themselves for the next assault.

The children are driven to compete against each other, endure harsh war games, and learn how to command. Only the very elite graduate to the final wargame, led by Ender, pitted against the war hero of the last invasion.

It's Harry Potter in space. But without the diapers.

After Ender won the war, he was unable to return to earth. Without a common enemy, the world fractured back into war, and Ender himself is a weapon of war that will be a threat to all nations but the one hosting him.

Victory rewarded with exile. And the next three books tell the story of how Ender travelled through space, and how he atoned for the genocide of an entire species.


I was hooked to Card after reading Ender's Shadow. This is the story of Bean, a child even younger, and even more brilliant than Ender, who was with Ender in the final battle. It began with the story of how he survived the streets, as a toddler, by changing the rules of the jungle into one that empowered the young and weak, while taking away the advantages of the bullies.

Later Bean played an important support role in Ender's battles. The book is a re-telling of Ender's Game through another pair of eyes, one that looked deeper than Ender ever did.

The plot is extremely well thought out, and I've been hooked ever since.

I even have a book on fiction writing by Card.

From book six onwards, the stories take place on Earth. Of how Bean and Ender's elder brother, strove to unite the war-ing nations on earth, many of which are using their Battle School children as military assets to realise their long-held delusions of divine destiny through expansionist campaigns.

In these recent books, Card has become rather vocal about what he thinks of the mess in the Middle East. No doubt coloured by the events of 9/11.


"As long as ordinary Muslims believe it's their duty to kill any Muslim who tries to quit being a Muslim, as long as they think they have a holy duty to resort to arms to compel unbelievers to obey Islamic law - you can't liberalize that, you can't make it a decent system for anybody. Not even for Muslims. Because the cruelest, narrowest, most evil people will always rise to power because they'll always be the ones most willing to wrap themselves in the crescent flag and murder people in God's name."
---from Giant of the Hegemon---


Seriously no holds barred.

But asides from little comments like these where the author vents his opinions to the readers, the rest of the book is without propaganda. The books are a good read. Card's vision and imagination makes him one of the best sci-fi writers I know.

Bean is one of the most compelling fictitious characters that I've read. Standing proudly together with Fitz Chivalry (The Farseer Trilogy, Robin Hobb), and Sam Vimes (Discworld, Terry Pratchett).

But those are stories for another day.