Review Page: Ender's Shadow by Orson Scott Card
| Title: |
Ender's Shadow |
| Author: |
Orson Scott Card |
| Format: |
Novel |
| Genre: |
Science Fiction |
| Publisher: |
Orbit |
| Date of Publication: |
3 August, 2000 |
| ISBN: |
1857239989 |
No. of Reviews: 1
Av. Rating: 5/10
Buy this book from the Amazon website.
15.11.2000 - Shahrazade - 5/10
List of Reviews | Bio
Ender's Shadow is Orson Scott Card's Tehanu.
In evaluating this book I have had to think of how relevant the author's stated intentions are to this consideration. Orson Scott Card states in the introduction to this book that he intends it to be a 'parallax', a companion piece to Ender's Game from a different perspective. Card's introduction is (as they are to all of his books) persuasive and led me to believe that this book wasn't, as I had first suspected, a shameless attempt to cash in on the Ender franchise. He invites the reader to consider whether the literary experiment of two books covering the same period works and says that for him it did.
Now this idea is one I've been considering myself anyway. A series of books considering the same events from the point of view of different characters is an interesting idea and one that show promise. Unfortunately this book is not a good example of the concept. Ender's Game was an incredible book, a success on many levels, and its three sequels also have merit. But Ender's Shadow is, frankly, a mistake.
Orson Scott Card is a fine writer and his skill at evoking place and character means that even though this book is in many respects a failure I cannot reasonable rate it lower than five. But it doesn't stand alone on its own merits. Only someone who has read Ender's Game could really be expected to enjoy it even then its belittling of Ender as a character is unwise and unsuccessful.
The story is that of Bean, one of Ender's coevals and lieutenants at battle school, an engaging walk-on character in Ender's Game. In this book Card explains Bean's history and how it weaves in an out of Ender's own. But he makes the mistake of thinking that to be an interesting character Bean must be all Ender is and more. So Bean has been made better than Ender in every respect: he's more intelligent at four than Ender is at six, he scores higher on the tests for battle school, he's more intelligent across the board and is in fact the designer of the Dragon army that trains Ender in command. He is also a genetically modified super-human who is doomed to die at age twenty who, through a strange twist of fate, grew up among the human debris on the streets of a futuristic Rotterdam. At every turn of the book it is clear that Ender is not as intelligent as Bean and misjudges him constantly. All the crucial successes of Ender's life are rated as nothing in comparison to this super child who's cold calculating mind manages to conceal his true abilities from almost everyone. The books works its way to the final battle of Ender's Game and only there does Card balk at the final hurdle. Although through the book Bean has seen what Ender doesn't and Bean makes the crucial comment that leads Ender to win the war against the Buggers, here Card stresses that Bean did not actually see a way to win and Ender did.
But this is too little, too late. Just as Ursula Le Guin tries to elevate a new character in Tehanu at the expense of the Earthsea Trilogy, Card has tried to power-up Bean to exceed Ender's achievements and the attempt is unsuccessful. As a reader this parallel history seems false to me. Bean has too many advantages and, up until the last battle, is too perfect. He even uses his only time off in the entire novel to up with a crucial idea to help Ender's brother and sister in their internet personas as Demosthenes and Locke. It's all just too much and to top it off the book ends in a desultory fashion leaving the way open for a sequel. After all, in this entire narrative, Bean hasn't accomplished anything of his own - he's just bolstered Ender's inadequacies. His only flaw is a lack of compassion and this is woefully unexplored.
I've wavered on the bordering between 4/10 and 5/10 in rating this book and I wouldn't really recommend it to anyone who hasn't read Ender's Game. But there is good material in it and some scenes are completely gripping. But in the final analysis Bean is the kind of hero that can't be believes in because no-one, no-one, has this level of ability. In Ender's Game Ender was the best, the one hope for humanity, and his abilities were off the scale. That I could believe as a donnČ of the plot but I can't no accept the concept of someone even better. With regret I rate Ender's Shadow as 5/10 and hope any other readers can consider it as kindly on the grounds of Card's undiminished talent even when seen in this mistake of a book.