Shadow of the Hegemon by Orson Scott Card

After the buzz I got from Ender's Shadow I couldn't wait to get started with Shadow of the Hegemon. This is, however, a very different book. Orson Scott Card said that as a child he was a huge fan of Risk, and always wanted to write a book that would allow him to rewrite the map of Earth, and this is the book. It's very political - situation on Earth is deteriorating as after Formic War is over people are not united anymore and battle for supremacy is beginning. The political story about who wants to rule who, and detailed plans about military campaigns - is really what the book is about.

So the familiar characters and their antics are really just the B-plot. Ender is off to a new colony and can never return to Earth, but the Powers That Be in their respective nations are very interested in all Battle School Graduates and want to make sure that their military talents are going to be fully utilized once the new world order comes knocking. Then the most valued of the children, the whole of Ender's Jeesh (the former Dragon Army) is kidnapped - except Bean who manages to escape, and takes it upon himself to get his friends free.

Now I'm not a huge fan of war literature (or movies) and strategy games are not my forte - and still I found this book quite interesting. It's quite captivating "what if" of (fairly) current politics and I have to say I've become quite a big fan of Card's writing style. Bean as a character is not nearly as sharp as he was in Ender's Shadow - which makes sense: in the previous book he's a kid that survived on the streets because of his intuition and wits, now he's spent years in a fairly protected environment so he's had time to mellow (well, a little bit). I think Card describes this slightly autistic boy really well - highly intelligent, but having many difficulties with relating to people and only slowly starting to understand his own emotions.

If I have one gripe about the book, I have to say I think it's a shame that the whole relationship between Bean and Petra is lacking a bit in foundation. It would have been nice to get a little bit more flashbacks on their time together and some more reason on their mutual understanding... in some cases there's even wrong information like Petra thinking about how Bean always believed in her in the final battle, which is so clearly wrong as it was clearly stated in several occasions that Bean was suspicious of Petra until the very end.

But all in all, a well written must-read book in the Ender series.

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