# Ender's Shadow by Orson Scott Card

## (discussed May 23, 2002)

On a ten-point scale (1=bad, 10=good), people who read the book gave the following ratings: 6 (Ignacio Viglizzo), 7, 7, 7, 8, 8, 9, 9 (Dedaimia Whitney), 9 (Raja Thiagarajan), 10
Average: 8.0

During the meeting Raja argued that the book was better written than Ender's Game in terms of style, pacing, and characterization--but it doesn't seem to have had nearly as much impact on people. Judy argued that this was because the book didn't have any surprises for people who read Ender's Game. Raja disagreed, saying that the people and things that were most important to Bean didn't even appear in the earlier book. After some discussion, the consensus was that, while the book had solid characterization and good plotting, it didn't bring any new science-fictional ideas to the table, and this may have been the reason for its lesser impact.

Interestingly enough, Chris Stanley hadn't read Ender's Game before this book. She loved this book, and is very interested in reading Ender's Game. The rest of us are very interested in hearing about her reactions to it ;-).