Post by Magill on Mar 17, 2005 12:43:44 GMT -5
There are going to be a lot of spoilers, so don't say I didn't warn you.
I placed a hold on this at my library ages ago, so I was up pretty high on the waiting list. After Shadow Puppets, I decided I wouldn't risk buying another one of these books in hardcover.
This one was okay. It was better than Shadow Puppets, but not as good as the first two. My two big problems were the overabundance of intrigue and what happened to the character of Virlomi. As for the first point--don't get me wrong, I love intrigue (that was my favorite part about Shadow of the Hegemon). And in this book, I loved the first two bits of it--Hot Soup delcaring himself Emperor and Alai defeating the first coup. But after that, it just seemed excessive.
Second, I thought Virlomi was a kick-ass character in books 2 and 3. But now she thinks she's a goddess? It just seemed like character assassination. I wonder if it was Card's personal beliefs taking over (given that she's not Christian).
It definitely seems like there's another book in the works. At first I thought that maybe Bean and his kids would still be voyaging in the time of Speaker for the Dead and the others. Maybe Bean and his kids would come to Lucitania and Novinha and her biologista children would re-lock Anton's key. And it would be revealed that some of the Lusos are descended from Bean, Petra, and Peter. But that doesn't make sense to me for a couple reason: since Jane knows pretty much everything (in computers at least) and since she's running Bean's investments, it seems like she would've told Ender that Bean was still out there. Also, there seems like there's going to be a confrontation with Bean and his kids and the woman who has the 9th stolen one. But she's going to an ordinary colony, not on a time-dialating mission to keep her alive.
So now I think there's going to be another book that takes place in the time between the Shadow series and the Speaker series. Its a new era, which would open up a lot of possibilites. And the action could take place while Ender and Valentine are on one of their planet-hopping journeys, so that they're out of the picture.
I placed a hold on this at my library ages ago, so I was up pretty high on the waiting list. After Shadow Puppets, I decided I wouldn't risk buying another one of these books in hardcover.
This one was okay. It was better than Shadow Puppets, but not as good as the first two. My two big problems were the overabundance of intrigue and what happened to the character of Virlomi. As for the first point--don't get me wrong, I love intrigue (that was my favorite part about Shadow of the Hegemon). And in this book, I loved the first two bits of it--Hot Soup delcaring himself Emperor and Alai defeating the first coup. But after that, it just seemed excessive.
Second, I thought Virlomi was a kick-ass character in books 2 and 3. But now she thinks she's a goddess? It just seemed like character assassination. I wonder if it was Card's personal beliefs taking over (given that she's not Christian).
It definitely seems like there's another book in the works. At first I thought that maybe Bean and his kids would still be voyaging in the time of Speaker for the Dead and the others. Maybe Bean and his kids would come to Lucitania and Novinha and her biologista children would re-lock Anton's key. And it would be revealed that some of the Lusos are descended from Bean, Petra, and Peter. But that doesn't make sense to me for a couple reason: since Jane knows pretty much everything (in computers at least) and since she's running Bean's investments, it seems like she would've told Ender that Bean was still out there. Also, there seems like there's going to be a confrontation with Bean and his kids and the woman who has the 9th stolen one. But she's going to an ordinary colony, not on a time-dialating mission to keep her alive.
So now I think there's going to be another book that takes place in the time between the Shadow series and the Speaker series. Its a new era, which would open up a lot of possibilites. And the action could take place while Ender and Valentine are on one of their planet-hopping journeys, so that they're out of the picture.
