Shadow of the Giant is the completion of the Bean subsaga of the Ender’s game universe. It’s the eighth book, and I’m not sure it needed to be written. That’s not to say it’s a bad book; the characters make sense, the plot moves along with some twists, and the ending works. What I mean is that Card has this tendency to expand his plans, which adds filler. For instance, Xenocide and Children of the Mind could easily have been one book (and I wouldn’t have missed the missing 150 pages at all.) The same thing occurs here, as Shadow Puppets and this book could easily have been one midsized novel, not two short ones. Sure, he gets his cut, and the book companies get their pieces of my $7. That doesn’t mean I have to like it.
One extra bonus is that Card consulted with someone I knew in college, Joan Han of NIH. But it’s not enough to make this a great book, or even an above-average one. It rates a 2 (Average) out of 5.
