Shadow Puppets

by Orson Scott Card

Grade: 2 1/2 stars
Story summary: Two people get married, one person succumbs to his teenage angst issues, one person unites the Muslim world and is actually semi-successful at world affairs, and one person tries to steal a whole bunch of babies.
See previous books: Ender's Shadow and Shadow of the Hegemon, and the next book: Shadow of the Giant.

Thoughts: Ok, so I love babies. They are the best. And I love it when people in books are open to having babies, and don't decide that the world is too nasty a place to have children (I'm looking at you Graceling and Inside Out and numerous other YA books). But it seemed like all Petra and Bean thought about in this book was babies. Especially Petra. That was it. The babies. No international politics, no scheming and battles of wits, no grand plans to save the world. At least Bean thought a bit about his impending death and how to get rid of Achilles.

Also, Peter was supposed to be as smart as Ender, wasn't he? It's just that he was too aggressive in personality to suit their purposes? But in this book he was--well, not that smart. It's not that smart people couldn't make dumb mistakes like he did. But generally it just seemed that all the main characters in this book were lacking their original spark. I miss the Battle Games and psychological insights of Ender's Shadow and the world politics of Shadow of the Hegemon (there was some here, just not as much). Sniff.

(Though I must admit, as annoying as Peter's seeming lack of intelligence was, it was pretty amusing. As was his parents' reaction to all that.)