Shadow Puppets

By: Orson Scott Card

Narrated by: David Birney, Stefan Rudnicki

Length: 10 hrs and 45 mins

Publisher's summary

Bestselling author Orson Scott Card brings to life a new chapter in the saga of Ender's Earth and The Shadow Series.

Earth and its society have been changed irrevocably in the aftermath of Ender Wiggin's victory over the Formics. The unity forced upon the warring nations by an alien enemy has shattered. Nations are rising again, seeking territory and influence, and most of all, seeking to control the skills and loyalty of the children from the Battle School.

But one person has a better idea. Peter Wiggin, Ender's older, more ruthless, brother, sees that any hope for the future of Earth lies in restoring a sense of unity and purpose. And he has an irresistible call on the loyalty of Earth's young warriors. With Bean at his side, the two will reshape our future.

Shadow Puppets is the continuing story of Bean and Petra, and the rest of Ender's Dragon Army, as they take their places in the new government of Earth.

Browse more titles in the Ender Wiggin series.

©2002 Orson Scott Card (P)2002 Fantastic Audio

Critic reviews

“David Birney's voice sounds purposefully fatigued, beautifully conveying the world leader Peter Wiggin's frustrated resignation, and Stefan Rudnicki's clipped, low baritone is perfect for the cloack-and-dagger email correspondence that bookends the chapters. Gabrielle de Cuir expertly handles both accents and emotion...[Scott Brick] tackles the Bean chapters with the youthful cynicism and passion that Bean embodies in this book, capturing the character's voice with wonderful passion.” —AudioFile

“The folks at Audio Renaissance have quite literally brought greatness to the text. They've included an introduction and a postscript read by Card himself, both of which place the novel and the audiobook in its context as well as enlightening us to the author's method of its construction. Multiple readers led by Stefan Rudnicki work perfectly to vocally illustrate each chapter, character and scene.” —Science Fiction and Fantasy on Ender's Game(A Science Fiction and Fantasy Essential)

“The ideal presentation of any book of mine is to have excellent actors perform it in audio format.” —Orson Scott Card from the afterword of Ender's Game

Great political thriller

Great characters and story, great research into geography and cultures. Well paced action and thought provoking

Good but the weakest Shadow book so far

I love this series and the way it can make a compelling story out of a glorified game of Risk. However this entry was significantly weighed down by the romance-and-babies plot.

Good not great

Good plot and story line. Slow to start, but I enjoyed theis book.

Dope

It was dope. Buy it. Ten words remain until I am done with this review.

Awesome story.

Loved it. A must for Ender fans. Card keeps the plot entertaining and hard to stop listening.

Great, but Lacking

I finished this book feeling that something was lacking. Still a really good one, don't get me wrong. Maybe it was the quickness of the climax.

Fantastic as always

If you could sum up Shadow Puppets in three words, what would they be?

Intelligent, Gripping, Speculative

What other book might you compare Shadow Puppets to and why?

The Whole shadow series is amazing

What aspect of David Birney and Stefan Rudnicki ’s performance would you have changed?

might have expanded the cast a bit more the number of characters exceeded the voice capabilities a it making it difficult at times to folllow who's sayng what unless intently listening.

Pretty great 👍

The author's writing style is fairly bare-bones on fine descriptions of items and people, but, as always, great with describing strategy and reason. Fair with romance. Best of all, he keeps it all very clean.
Very little cursing and little innuendo.
Downright squeaky compared to other non-Christian author's and much cleaner than some supposedly Christian authors.

Wonderful story.

I almost didn't get this, due to the review my Joey saying there were homophobic topics. However, I wanted to complete the series so, I did. It was minor, and to me, was something easily missed in the story, be it no one draws your attention to it. The story is good, and very important to the Bean and Petria story line. the performance was amazing, as always.

Just as great as the last in the Shadow seires.

The story was just as good as the last book in this series. and even better was that there weren't as many cringe worth interlude tunes.