{"id":1886,"date":"2020-01-23T15:00:12","date_gmt":"2020-01-23T22:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/?p=1886"},"modified":"2020-01-10T20:41:09","modified_gmt":"2020-01-11T03:41:09","slug":"book-shadow-of-the-hegemon-2000","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/2020\/01\/23\/book-shadow-of-the-hegemon-2000\/","title":{"rendered":"BOOK: Shadow of the Hegemon (2000)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"ShadowShadow of the Hegemon<\/u><\/strong>
Year: 2000
Author: Orson Scott Card
Length: 365 pages<\/p>\n

It\u2019s almost fitting how the follow-on book in the spin-off series to Ender\u2019s Game<\/em><\/a> takes the same tactic as Speaker for the Dead<\/em><\/a> and transforms itself into a completely different genre. While Speaker for the Dead<\/em> and its sequels still maintained a level of science fiction for the Ender<\/em> saga, Shadow of the Hegemon<\/em> pivots into a political thriller with almost no hints of sci-fi to be seen. The strength of the characters helped make this transition relatively smooth, but it still highlights how these child-aged individuals hardly have any child-like qualities.<\/p>\n

While the Shadow<\/em><\/a> saga certainly needed to start out focusing on Bean, I did appreciate how Shadow of the Hegemon<\/em> developed many of the supporting characters. For the first time in both series, I felt like the reader was able to know Petra and Peter while also seeing what Achilles was capable of accomplishing. The results of bringing back children war heroes to Earth had a logical feel to its progression, even if I didn\u2019t really care much about southeastern Asian politics to really engage with the politics of the plot. That\u2019s not to say the whole \u201ccat and mouse\u201d between Achilles and Bean wasn\u2019t interesting; it just wasn\u2019t what had brought me to this series in the first place.<\/p>\n

Of course, having read the Ender saga first, I can already see the early ripples of how this side-series will start to wrap up. Now that Ender is less of a presence in the Shadow<\/em> series, other characters finally have a chance to show what they can do. While I\u2019ll reserve my predictions might change with what actually happens, I get the sense that Peter\u2019s tenure as Hegemon changes the world just as Bean changes into some super-intelligent giant. I will admit that some of Orson Scott Card\u2019s predictions from 2000 still seem plausible today, given the political climate, it\u2019s clear that the author did his research before playing with the ever-important sci-fi \u201cwhat if\u201d scenario.<\/p>\n

A political pivot from a well-known sci-fi series, I give Shadow of the Hegemon <\/em>4.0 stars out of 5.<\/p>\n

\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\"\u00a0\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\"\u00a0\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\"\u00a0\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\"<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Shadow of the HegemonYear: 2000Author: Orson Scott CardLength: 365 pages It\u2019s almost fitting how the follow-on book in the spin-off series to Ender\u2019s Game takes the same tactic as Speaker for the Dead and transforms itself into a completely different genre. While Speaker for the Dead and its sequels still maintained a level of science […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,54],"tags":[40,2039,55,59,2038,554,8,28,2154,2155,570],"class_list":["post-1886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-4-0-stars","category-book","tag-40","tag-bean","tag-book","tag-enders-game","tag-enders-shadow","tag-orson-scott-card","tag-review","tag-series","tag-shadow-of-the-hegemon","tag-shadow-series","tag-speaker-for-the-dead"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1886"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1886\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1895,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1886\/revisions\/1895"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}