Finally finished the next in the series: Shadow of the Giant. It took me a while because I've been at this series for several months and it was getting a bit tedious. Plus I was overworked at school and the story started a bit slow. However, I am pleased to report an overall contentedness with the story as a whole. In this one, the arch nemesis Achilles de Flandres is dead, but has left a legacy of ambitious nations. Many of the former Battle School graduates accumulate power in their respective positions and turn on each other with their various supporting nations. Meanwhile, Bean and his wife continue their hunt for what Achilles stole and hid throughout the world. Bean's time may be running short. And erstwhile, Peter continues his quest to consolidate his power, and ultimately marries Bean's divorced wife.
SPOILERS
Bean's condition will claim him soon, but they find all those babies distributed throughout the world in other women's wombs. Some are found to have the same genetic condition as Bean, while others do not. Bean then determines (with help in high places) to divorce his wife so she can remarry and care for the normal children while he takes his children on a voyage at near lightspeed in the hopes that low gravity and the granting of years through time dilation will prolong his life long enough for the earth-bound to find a cure and call him home. All the actor nations in the previous wars in these books are still the primary fighters, only with shifting roles as to who are the good guys and who are the bad. Peter succeeds in creating a very democratic system where various nations vote whether or not to enter his Free People of Earth (FPE) government, and finally has a credible military to support any territories dissenting from their majority-run government (i.e. Nubia from Sudan) in the desire to join the FPE. A strange subplot was brought up, then swept under the rug, as if Card had intended to make more of it, forgot about it for a time, then remembered and just addressed it enough to say it was a hoax, in that Bean's creator supposedly engineered a dangerous virus that would alter human genetics, but had lied about the whole thing. In the end, Peter is clearly on the path to a worldwide victory through peacekeeping and peaceful means, while the ambitious and destructive Battle School aggressors are on ships to govern foreign worlds where they will be the only queens in their games of chess, without any competitors, and therefore can rule effectively without competing ambition.
END SPOILERS
Overall I liked this one too. It just took a bit for me to get into it. I have problems with certain inconsistencies, though. Again, Bean makes it clear that he *never* wanted to lead or fight or have any ambition, or even to be like Ender. But clearly in Ender's Shadow, he deliberately mimics Ender to get ahead in the eyes of those in authority, with his eye particularly set on the future of earth. Now you may argue that he didn't really want to be Ender, he was just pretending to get ahead, and I would agree that's probably true, but it does show he was ambitious enough to try to get ahead in the world by whatever means. Again, Bean seems less omniscient than the 4 year-old we first got to know. I'm surprised by this, but I like the fallible Bean better anyway. Strangely, the noble Muslims who had seemingly forsaken all extremism in the previous book are now just as extremist as ever, or nearly so. Many push the leader for war while he desires peace, and they go to some surprising lengths to pursue that end. Peter is much more likable in this one. In fact in each book he grows on you more an more. Frankly his story is more interesting to me than Bean's and I sort of wish the books had been more focused on him. However, he got a bit of Anakin treatment, i.e he was emasculated through retcons. He was too tough and aggressive before for Battle School but was learning and maturing. But now we learn that such was a lie and there is no such thing as "too aggressive for Battle School," and instead we learn that he is actually not charismatic enough (though most of the jerks in Battle School had utterly no charisma.
But in the end, I found it satisfactory. Nothing compares to the original Ender's Game in my mind, but I still have enjoyed all these books. Next up, Shadows in Flight, focusing on Bean's children on their lengthy voyage.