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theonlyendersgamefan · 9 months ago

Text

No spoilers

SHADOWS IN FLIGHT IS ACTUALLY GOOD??

I genuinely forgot that Orson Scott Card is a competent sci-fi author. Every other shadow book has me like “please let this be a normal feild trip” and then you get 100k words of the slowest Mormon manifesto disguised as political thriller. (Except for shadow of the giant (they could never make me hate you, shadow of the giant))

Shadows in flight is classic 80s sci-fi and relative to the rest of OSC’s library it only has a little bit of sudo-incest. But even outside of that I’m also just really engaged with the story and junk. And even if the story was entirely non existent Cards distinct writing style from Enders game and speaker for the dead, which was lacking in the first half of the shadow saga imo, returns here which is a breath of fresh air.

I feel I should mention this early on just for transparency sake but, a positive book review by me is entirely useless because I will rate a book 5 starts purely based on my own ability to creat fun mental visualization out of it.

Let me explain. Delving truely a tiny bit into spoiler territory.

At some point a group is in a hallway in 0g and they’re all geard up. My own interpretation of this scene has this group, who is not usually especially discreet, be as disciplined as a highly trained swat team. In reality, text on paper, their gear is no more then rudimentary. Just as a consequence of not needing anything more. They are probably moving as instinct guides them. In my mind, however, they are fully bravo 6 going dark. No wasted movement, swift and efficient. The entire atmosphere of the story changes, they are having conversations through coms and I will mentally add in radio chatter even if it doesn’t make sense. Or I’ll make up a whole dramatic sequence for them opening a hatch or turning a corner. It’s fun as a little brain exercise but it’s not black on white text so my review of the book, which is based partly on the above, is biased because I imagined it in a way that I would like best.

What I can say is that this book is much less intrusive than the rest of the shadow saga. Orson Scott Card still can’t help but tell us directly what we’re supposed to think and HIS interpretation but in this book I feel that he’s taking a similar approach as speaker for the dead. Each character is written strongly enough that they can disagree on a conclusion based on the same information and neither is pitted to be explicitly wrong by the book (like a couple other shadow books I could name (I HATE SHADOW PUPPETS (Why waste such a goo name on such a boring book))).

Overall the book does give you more space to breath and more time in between receiving information and the characters declaring their own opinions. I actually several times got to the conclusion of one of the characters before they did because they all think their conclusions out. Instead of starting with the answer and condescending to everyone about how obvious the reasoning is later.

I’m also a big fan of the tech in this book. It’s much more grounded then in say xenocide. Advanced but based in concepts of physics and chemistry and biology that are common enough knowledge. You don’t feel overwhelmed or like you just have to accept that this is true and not gibberish.

Anyway SHADOWS IN PEAK.

I definitely didn’t write out all my thoughts here partially because I’m trying to stay as far from spoilers as I can and partially because I’m just writing down ideas as they come to me (is that obvious. I’ll write more about this book for the foreseeable future actually, it’s becoming my favourite shadow book (shadow of the giant in a close second but it’s becoming a more distant second which each page of shadows in flight)

I also haven’t actually finished the book.. I’m half way through and had to talk about it, soz.

#enders game #enderverse #shadows in flight #shadow saga #bean #julien delphiki

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