96. Ender’s Shadow by Orson Scott Card (Science fiction) 467 p.

Ender’s Shadow can be read as a standalone novel, but it’s intended as a companion to Ender’s Game and as the first in the Bean sequence of Enderverse novels. Bean was the greatest of all Ender’s lieutenants, but we saw relatively little of him in Ender’s Game, so I wasn’t sure what to expect from this novel, which is partly a retelling of the events of that book, but from Bean’s point of view.

Growing up an orphan on the streets of Rotterdam, never even given a name until he is four years old, Bean wants nothing more than to survive, and maybe to have enough food to eat and a safe place to sleep. Even his formidable intelligence can’t make up for his youth and small size, so when he gets the chance to go to Battle School, he takes it.

At first, some of Bean’s history seemed implausible, but it quickly became apparent that there would be an explanation, which turns out to be one of the more interesting ideas in the book. (And Card’s science fiction ideas, even when they’re impractical or implausible in the real world, are always fascinating to think about and explore.)

Seeing Ender and the Battle School through Bean’s eyes was a revelation, because Bean has a far more analytical mind than Ender does, and far less trust in institutions. Where Ender might occasionally rebels against a system, when he feels his trust has been violated, Bean will never fully buy into that system in the first place, which gives him a unique perspective, combining both an insider’s and an outsider’s point of view.

I also just plain liked Bean. Some of his interactions with the Battle School staff, namely Dimak and Graff, were hilarious (as is pretty much every conversations Graff has with anyone. I love Graff, and I hope to see more of him later in the series.) His background is so tragic that the story could easily have been maudlin or sentimental, but Bean has no self-pity in him, and his personality defies it in others.

As I said at the beginning, this book can be read alone, but you’ll get much more out of it if you read Ender’s Game first. (Also, this book contains a number of spoilers for Ender’s Game, less in terms of plot (though there are some) than in terms of character development.)

I’m so glad I tried Orson Scott Card’s books, because missing out on them would have been a huge loss, even though I would never have known it. Ender’s Shadow is about as close to a perfect science fiction novel as any I’ve ever read!

Rating: 10 out of 10

Pages read: 28,298

Tags: 50 Book Challenge 2008, Bean quartet, Cardathon Challenge Redux, Chunkster Challenge 2008, Enderverse, Orson Scott Card