Shadow of the Hegemon (Shadow, #2) (Ender Saga)

by Orson Scott Card

[empressbrooke]

While the rest of the Ender series started 3,000 years after the events in [book: Ender's Game]/[book: Ender's Shadow], Bean's series starts up immediately afterward and lets us finally find out what happened to all of Ender's Battle School classmates. We already knew Peter Wiggin became Hegemon from the events of the Ender series, but now we get to witness just how a teenage boy finds himself in such a position.

I found myself thrilled to be back with characters such as Bean and Petra. One thing that stuck out for me is just how much their nationalities matter now. In Ender's Game/Shadow, the fact that the Battle School students came from all over the world was mentioned, but not with much force. This book emphasizes nationalities - Bean is Greek, Petra is Armenian - because they're no longer just citizens of Earth bound by a common enemy.

Although the tone of the book is very similar to Ender's Game/Shadow, (unlike the rest of the Ender series, which is like a philosophical biological mystery), the sci-fi is gone and is replaced with world politics. I can't say that I've ever read military strategy sort of books before, but it didn't even occur to me until after I finished it that that's what Shadow of the Hegemon is. I was so invested in the characters I've grown to love that the genre didn't even register.