Shadow of the Hegemon

By: Orson Scott Card

Narrated by: David Birney, Scott Brick, Gabrielle de Cuir

Length: 12 hrs and 47 mins

Publisher's summary

Ender's Game told the story of the boy "Ender" Wiggin and his hard-won victory over an alien race that would have destroyed the Earth and all of humanity. But Ender was not the only child in the Battle School. He was just the best of the best. In Ender's Shadow, Orson Scott Card told the story of another of those precocious generals, the one they called Bean - the one who became Ender's right hand, his strategist, and his friend.

And now Card continues Bean's story, and finally tells a tale long awaited by millions of fans. At last we learn what happened on Earth after the destruction of the Hive Queen's worlds, after humanity no longer had a single enemy to unify the warring nations. This is the story of how Bean turned away from his first friend, Ender, and became the tactical genius who won the Earth for Ender's brother, Peter, who became the Hegemon.

Please note: This 2001 recording represents the technology of the time when it was produced. This is currently the best available source audio from the publisher.

Browse more titles in the Ender Wiggin series.

©2000 Orson Scott Card

Great story, bad audio production

What did you love best about Shadow of the Hegemon?

The story is great and fills in and continues the story of Bean and the other members of Ender's team.

Would you be willing to try another one of the narrators’s performances?

I'm not sure the problems were the narrator, other than mispronouncing so many words. The editing and production are what really ruin it, though.

Any additional comments?

There are many places where hedge-a-MON is pronounced he-GEM-en, and, worse, in many places it was dubbed over by another voice at a higher pitch and louder recording level, which is very distracting from the story. The whole recording sounds like I had downloaded the lowest quality, most compressed audible format, not the enhanced format. There were other glitches too, like repeated sections. Overall the editing and production are a disaster. Also there is the horrible, distracting, and too long, music segments they stick in at the end of each chapter. It might be ok if it were just a one or two second brief riff, and not such a long disruption to the story flow.

Hegemon dubs

The performance was as good as always, and the quality if the book was as high as one can exspect out of Scott card. However the book people who do the audio part dubs the hegemon every time. It is really quite annoying. Others then that it's a good listen.

Awesome Addition to the Enderverse!

Another of Orson Scott Card's Enderverse books, Shadow of the Hegemon chronicles the strategic nation warring and politicking after the Formic War (Formics are an insectoid alien species).

The book picks up after the Battle School children return to Earth, having successfully and ruthlessly defended our planet from the invasion of the Formics. Now that Earth's common enemy has been exterminated (documented in Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow), Earth's nations begin to carve up the world in a great battle for complete human hegemony.

About three quarters of the way through the book I said to myself, "This book reads like one long, involved game of Risk." I chuckled aloud when Card said in the audiobook's postlude that his love for Risk games influenced his interest in international strategic politics as a child - and eventually his decision to write this book.

The mechanics of the audiobook were very good, if you can forgive the transition music (a mix between Thomas the Tank Engine and an 80's-era MIDI video game soundtrack). There were several different readers, giving distinction to the character's voices and personalities. I didn't like Petra's actor so much, but I'm nitpicking at this point. In the postlude, Card stated that he writes his books to be read aloud - in fact, he wished all his readers could hear his books before or in place of reading them.

I listened to it at normal speed, and never had the desire to speed it up. In fact, I found myself sitting in the car listening to it after I had arrived home on multiple occasions. I've decided I'll eventually listen to/read all of the Enderverse books and short stories.

The Enderverse just... entertains, and Shadow of the Hegemon is no exception.

Another enjoyable story

Another enjoyable book in the enderverse.

I like how Thor use multiple narrators to tell the story well without becoming confusing.

It is a little amusing that one of the voice actors must have been pronouncing Hegemony incorrectly and it has been corrected in post production. It doesn't take away from the telling of the story though so well done.

Hegemon pronunciation?

This book is the perfect entry into the world left to Bean and all of the Battle Schoolers immediately following the formic wars. The readers' performances were excellent, but apparently there was some confusion about the correct pronunciation of the word "Hegemon" which, as you might expect, comes up a bit.

That would have been unfortunate, but the way they fixed it was even worse. Instead of replacing a complete though (or even a sentence) of dialogue, they just spliced in the word "Hegemon". Frequently they would only splice a part of the word to make the "g" soft or fix the emphasis.

While I could see how listeners might get confused if they did not initially associate the varying pronunciations, this seemed like a lazy solution. Also they missed a few of them, so the confusion wasn't entirely mitigated in spite of some poor intern's tedious efforts.

80% as good as Ender's shadow

kept my attention for the most part and well worth listening to, but not nearly as good as Ender's shadow. It did not have the intelligence, detail and uniqueness of Ender's shadow. all the characters seemed to take on much more traditional, played out rolls, which is the opposite of what made enders Shadow so unique, interesting and unpredictable. it just seemed much more formulaic!

Wonderful Read

Really enjoyed this one. It was truly a very different story, a different feel then any of his other books that I've read. I think it is even a great story in and of itself even if a reader had not read the previous books.

Good story. Weird cuts for the word "hegemon"...

Great story, completely different from others from the author. Yet the recording was kind of botched together.

"OSC" good... "Hegemon" bad

What other book might you compare Shadow of the Hegemon to and why?

There was lots of person to person struggle like in the first book, but a lot like Foundation, conflict between countries where wars are fought, dancer to the undercurrent of the cleverness of individual and restrained by the truths of human nature proven by time.

What does the narrators bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

This section is the reason why I am bothering to write a review. What you wouldn't get from reading the book is the extreme compulsion to punch the audio engineer in the face. At least 50 times throughout the audio book every time one of the male narrators would go to say "Hegemon" a foreign voice, cutting in at a slightly different volume and with different background noise would cut in and say... "Hegemon". I could not even tell if it was the same person speaking or not since there were to many other differences. I would not even have commented but it happened so many times. It felt like the whole audio book had been recorded with the narrator reading a completely random word and at the last minute they had to go back in and try to implant the correct one.

Any additional comments?

I really did like the book.

“Hegemon”

The book was good, and the narration was for the most part great, but often times whenever the word ‘hegemon’ is said it’s in a slightly different voice and with a bit less audio static. It’s a little jarring at times. It’s as if the original person pronounced it wrong so they had to go back and re record it.
Also, more than half the time they don’t pronounce Achilles’ name right, like a-sheel.