Review:: Shadow of the Hegemon, by Orson Scott Card

Title: Shadow of the Hegemon

Author: Orson Scott Card

Series: Ender's Shadow, #2

Format: Hardcover

Rating: ★☆☆☆☆

Previously:

Ender's Shadow

Ender's Shadow was fine, if not great. This book is bad and should feel wrong. Orson Scott Card decides to get weirdly preachy and weird moments, he keeps emphasizing how nothing but children matter, he's incredibly offensive to people with genetic disorders (cough ME), and he seriously says at the end that Guns, Germs, and Steel laid the ground rules for him. And everyone should read it. Makes sense. Oh, and he can't write women. Spoilers everywhere.

Review:: Ender's Shadow, by Orson Scott Card

Title: Ender's Shadow

Author: Orson Scott Card

Series: Ender's Shadow, #1

Format: Hardcover

Rating: ★★★☆☆

I remember being excited as a kid when I saw this in the "New" section at one of the University of Texas libraries. I remember my mother and I thinking it was pretty decent. And that's the feeling I get from it now. It's okay, but doesn't stand up to the later Ender books, like Speaker for the Dead or Xenocide. It also deals with religion very differently, which isn't surprising to me.

48HBC:: One Down, ??? to Go?

I've now finished Ender's Shadow and the last 60 or so pages were actually pretty hard to plow through because my brain just wouldn't focus. I had a lot of feelings about it, but will probably put off writing most of my reviews until Sunday. Why? Well, my 48 hour period will end at 2am on Sunday, and I figured this means I would be able to cram in more reading time, and less blogging time.

However, while I won't be doing my reviews until later, I will give you my ratings.

Ender's Shadow? ★★★☆☆

I am now slightly over 7 hours in. Now that I've finished Ender's Shadow I'm going to read Deathless, by Catherynne M. Valente.

I've really wanted to read this one for a while, despite knowing pretty much nothing about it. (That makes sense. I promise. It's actually not that uncommon for me.) And well, the fact that the promotional blurb on the front is by Cory Doctorow, I'm even more excited to read it. I'm going to try to check in again at 11am, or 9 hours in. Wish me luck!

48HBC:: Starting... Now!

Well, it's 2am on Friday and so I'm going to get started with the 48HBC (because my sleep schedules make so much sense). I'm going to be starting off with:

Ender's Shadow, by Orson Scott Card. I recently re-read the Ender Quartet and I figured, why not go along and read the parallel books?

Now, I know, I know. Orson Scott Card is a pretty awful human being. But for the most part, his books are nothing like his blog posts. I'm not about to heavily monetarily support him by purchasing his books new at a book store, but hey, I'll check out his book from the library. Chances are, looking at the state of this book, they won't be purchasing a new one any time soon.

...unless I damage it. So I better not damage it.