Shadow of the Giant

I just finished Orson Scott Card's "Shadow of the Giant" and I am extremely pleased. Giant is the fourth book of parallel novels to Card's extremely popular Ender's Saga.

Card's Shadow series is focused on Bean, the young genius from the Battle School. Giant isn't as Bean heavy as most of the Shadow novels, this focuses on many of the characters from the saga. Peter, Bean, Petra and many of the children from the Battle School who now are active in the world's affairs.

The main arc of the story is Peter trying to unite the countries of Earth under one government, and having Bean helping him before he dies.

The biggest problem I had was how quickly some of wars being fought and the democracy votes took place. These wars were over very quickly and countries joined Peter's Free People of Earth without much deliberation. I know the kids are geniuses and all, but some of the stuff seemed to happen a little too neatly.

But honestly, that didn't really bug me much; this is Card's 8th book in the series, if you've read this so far you've come to love these characters. I want to know what happens to them; to their world. This is an extremely satisfying book, the ending just what I wanted/needed.

I can't recomend this book enough, but it is a part of the series. Many people had to read Ender's Game in highschool and may be familiar with many of these characters, but you can't really appreciate Giants unless you've read at least the Shadow series, if not all of Ender's sequence.