By Orson Scott Card
Since the book club had be re-reading Ender’s Game, I decided it might be fun to add this one. Neither is very long, so I figured I’d read about some of the same events from the perspective of Bean rather than Ender. I didn’t care for it. 50% of the book is just reiterating how smart Bean is. He’s such a genius, he’s figured it all out already! Again and again. It’s acknowledged by the characters and Bean himself in the book that he’s less likeable than Ender and it makes it harder to enjoy his story. His personality combined with the overemphasis on how brilliant he is made it tedious. It felt like Card was stuck given how smart he made the Wiggins children. He wanted to make another child even smarter but didn’t have the brains himself to describe this kid without making it cartoonish and repetitive. I thought I might read Ender in Exile after this, since it has been sitting on my shelf for years, but I’m feeling down on the whole Ender/Shadow universe now. Ender’s Game was decent, and I recall Speaker for the Dead being decent. I don’t know why anyone suggested Ender’s Shadow was worth reading.