Book Review: Shadow Puppets

This book is the third in Orson Scott Card's Shadow Series which is a parallel series to the Ender's Game Series. The Shadow Series follows the events playing out on earth following the destruction of an alien civilization by a group of children trained up to be the greatest military minds alive. The main character of the series is Bean, a boy who's genes were illegally altered as an embryo resulting in unlimited brain growth. Along with this added brain power he also continues to grow physically.

This book continues the story of Bean after he has rescued other battle school graduates and friends from the evil influence of Achilles. However, with Achilles still in the world, Bean and his friend Petra are not safe. Shadow Puppets follows Bean and Petra as they try to find a way to get rid of Achilles, who has risen in power over China and many other nations. Many other battle school graduates also rise to the top of their home countries as tensions rise and war appears imminent. At the same time, Peter Wiggin, the Hegemon of the World and brother to the famous Ender Wiggin, seeks to use Achilles to accomplish his own purpose of uniting the world under a single governing body, the Hegemony.

Shadow Puppets definitely lived up to my expectations and kept my attention from start to finish. Although the pages were more commentary and dialog than actual action, you would think the story would be boring. The strategy discussed and story taking place, while being very detailed and deep, seemed so simple and easy to comprehend that I still felt very involved as a reader. I enjoyed reading pages on strategy and plans and then being filled in on how the plans worked with only a paragraph or a few sentences in the next chapter.

Bean is still as interesting as can be as he struggles to cope with his impending death and feelings for Petra. It is also interesting to see how Petra can manipulate him due to his admiration and love for her. Eventually this manipulation leads to one of the main story lines of the book.

One letdown was that I thought that Shadow Puppets was the last book in the series, when in fact it is the next to last book. As the story began to wind down, I realized that there were just too many loose ends to tie up in 30 pages or so. That kind of bummed me out. It's actually downright annoying when you expect something to finish and then it turns out that the story goes on. Kind of like when church is supposed to be over, but that one old guy in the ward is rambling on about something totally unrelated to the lesson and he just won't let up either because he doesn't know what time it is or he doesn't care what time it is. But you want to go home to catch the second half of the Suns game...

Overall, I highly recommend this book as well as the whole Ender and Bean series to anyone who enjoys reading but sometimes gets bogged down in the middle of a long book. The books are all about 300 pages and very easy reads. They are very entertaining. Anyone who enjoyed Ender's Game or Ender's Shadow will thoroughly enjoy this book as well.