Ender Wiggin, the hero and scapegoat of mass alien destruction in Ender's Game, receives a chance at redemption in this novel. Ender, who proclaimed as a mistake his success in wiping out an alien race, wins the opportunity to cope better with a second race, discovered by Portuguese colonists on the planet Lusitania. Orson Scott Card infuses this long, ambitious tale with intellect by casting his characters in social, religious and cultural contexts. Like its predecessor, this book won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards. Reuploaded Thanks to mhazrati
Set between Card's Hugo and Nebula–winning Ender's Game (1985) and Speaker for the Dead (1986), this philosophical novel covers familiar events, but puts new emphasis on their ethical ramifications. In the wake of his victory over the alien Formics, 12-year-old military genius Ender Wiggins is hailed as a hero, but governments opposed to the International Fleet, which trained him, intend to portray him as a monster. Ender winds up as titular governor of one of the new human colonies, where he struggles to adapt to civilian life and ponders his role in the deaths of thousands of humans and an entire alien species.
Card's latest installment in his Shadow subseries (Ender's Shadow, etc.), which parallels the overarching series that began with Ender's Game (1985), does a superlative job of dramatically portraying the maturing process of child into adult. The imminent death of Bean, a superhuman 20-something Battle School graduate who suffers from uncontrolled growth due to a genetic disorder, leaves little time for Peter the Hegemon, Ender's older brother, to set up a single world government and for Bean and his wife and former classmate, Petra, to reclaim all their stolen children.
In Shadow Puppets, Orson Scott Card continues the storyline of Shadow of the Hegemon, following the exploits of the Battle School children, prodigies who have returned to an Earth thrown into chaos after the unifying force of the alien invasion they stopped in Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow has dissipated. Foremost among these whiz kids is the brilliant Bean who, in Shadow of the Hegemon, rescued his comrades from his nemesis-the dastardly Achilles. Now, the down-but-not-out evil genius is again scheming towards global domination and vengeance against the irrepressible Bean. It's up to Bean and his newfound love, Petra, to outwit the young psychopath and save the world.
The novel Ender's Game and its sequel Speaker for the Dead both won the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award, making Card the only author (as of 2007) winner of both of science fiction's top prizes in consecutive years. His writing contains detailed characterization and moral issues. Card has written, "We care about moral issues, nobility, decency, happiness, goodness—the issues that matter in the real world, but which can only be addressed, in their purity, in fiction.
