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

Excellent As Expected

Would you listen to Shadow Puppets again? Why?

Overall, this was another excellent book by Orson Scott Card. I am steadily moving through the Ender's Game Series, starting with the Shadow stories (after Ender's Game of course) and this was another positive addition to the story. It is nothing like Ender's Game or Shadow again, but if you liked Shadow of the Hegemon this is formatted very similarly as a continuation of that story. It is admittedly less interesting than Ender's Shadow by a fair margin, and more predictable than Hegemon, but still worth reading. It focuses a LOT on military strategy.

Before I downloaded it, I saw a review that was extremely critical of the supposed anti-homosexual commentary and was expecting it to be much worse. Realistically there is about a 5 minute conversation where one character in the book expresses his opinion that even though he is of the homosexual persuasion, he believes that every human's desire to have children with a woman transcends that. So basically, don't let the easily offended reviewer deter you and make you think that this is an anti-gay book by any means.

Review of Shadow Puppets by Orson Scott Card

Shadow Puppets, by Orson Scott Card is an excellent sequel to Ender's Shadow. Card creates a whole new perspective of science fiction, showing different character's perspectives including that of the antagonist.

This story should be listened to by more mature minds; those that can handle death and banter of lovers. This book is also for the slightly more scientific and technical minds who enjoy analyzing and solving problems.

issue with cronology

exelent naration but the storry fealth like it had issues with keeping some kind of cronological timeline

worth a credit

it was worth a credit to listen to this book. average book but not bad

Closure!

All I wanted to know is what happens next to Julian, Petra, and Achilles. If you like Scott’s writing then you will enjoy the closure this book brings after Shadow of the Hegemon. The audio was better than Shadow of the Hegemon (I don’t know what happened to that book but I wouldn’t recommend spending a credit on it). This book on the other hand goes back to great audio like that of Ender’s Shadow.

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.