Shadow Puppets Audiobook By Orson Scott Card cover art

Shadow Puppets

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Shadow Puppets

By: Orson Scott Card
Narrated by: David Birney, Stefan Rudnicki
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About this listen

Bestselling author Orson Scott Card brings to life a new chapter in the saga of Ender's Earth and The Shadow Series.

Earth and its society have been changed irrevocably in the aftermath of Ender Wiggin's victory over the Formics. The unity forced upon the warring nations by an alien enemy has shattered. Nations are rising again, seeking territory and influence, and most of all, seeking to control the skills and loyalty of the children from the Battle School.

But one person has a better idea. Peter Wiggin, Ender's older, more ruthless, brother, sees that any hope for the future of Earth lies in restoring a sense of unity and purpose. And he has an irresistible call on the loyalty of Earth's young warriors. With Bean at his side, the two will reshape our future.

Shadow Puppets is the continuing story of Bean and Petra, and the rest of Ender's Dragon Army, as they take their places in the new government of Earth.

Browse more titles in the Ender Wiggin series.©2002 Orson Scott Card (P)2002 Fantastic Audio
Fiction Sagas Science Fiction
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Critic reviews

“David Birney's voice sounds purposefully fatigued, beautifully conveying the world leader Peter Wiggin's frustrated resignation, and Stefan Rudnicki's clipped, low baritone is perfect for the cloack-and-dagger email correspondence that bookends the chapters. Gabrielle de Cuir expertly handles both accents and emotion...[Scott Brick] tackles the Bean chapters with the youthful cynicism and passion that Bean embodies in this book, capturing the character's voice with wonderful passion.” —AudioFile

“The folks at Audio Renaissance have quite literally brought greatness to the text. They've included an introduction and a postscript read by Card himself, both of which place the novel and the audiobook in its context as well as enlightening us to the author's method of its construction. Multiple readers led by Stefan Rudnicki work perfectly to vocally illustrate each chapter, character and scene.” —Science Fiction and Fantasy on Ender's Game(A Science Fiction and Fantasy Essential)

“The ideal presentation of any book of mine is to have excellent actors perform it in audio format.” —Orson Scott Card from the afterword of Ender's Game

What listeners say about Shadow Puppets

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Excellent As Expected

Would you listen to Shadow Puppets again? Why?

Overall, this was another excellent book by Orson Scott Card. I am steadily moving through the Ender's Game Series, starting with the Shadow stories (after Ender's Game of course) and this was another positive addition to the story. It is nothing like Ender's Game or Shadow again, but if you liked Shadow of the Hegemon this is formatted very similarly as a continuation of that story. It is admittedly less interesting than Ender's Shadow by a fair margin, and more predictable than Hegemon, but still worth reading. It focuses a LOT on military strategy.

Before I downloaded it, I saw a review that was extremely critical of the supposed anti-homosexual commentary and was expecting it to be much worse. Realistically there is about a 5 minute conversation where one character in the book expresses his opinion that even though he is of the homosexual persuasion, he believes that every human's desire to have children with a woman transcends that. So basically, don't let the easily offended reviewer deter you and make you think that this is an anti-gay book by any means.

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7 people found this helpful

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Review of Shadow Puppets by Orson Scott Card

Shadow Puppets, by Orson Scott Card is an excellent sequel to Ender's Shadow. Card creates a whole new perspective of science fiction, showing different character's perspectives including that of the antagonist.

This story should be listened to by more mature minds; those that can handle death and banter of lovers. This book is also for the slightly more scientific and technical minds who enjoy analyzing and solving problems.

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    4 out of 5 stars
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issue with cronology

exelent naration but the storry fealth like it had issues with keeping some kind of cronological timeline

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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worth a credit

it was worth a credit to listen to this book. average book but not bad

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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Closure!

All I wanted to know is what happens next to Julian, Petra, and Achilles. If you like Scott’s writing then you will enjoy the closure this book brings after Shadow of the Hegemon. The audio was better than Shadow of the Hegemon (I don’t know what happened to that book but I wouldn’t recommend spending a credit on it). This book on the other hand goes back to great audio like that of Ender’s Shadow.

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I love the story and agree that the most compelling version of it is in audiobook format

I liked reading it but prefer hearing read aloud by the voices of characters I’ve grown attached to

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

Great book!

I just love these books; the "Ender" series and now the "Shadow" series, with Bean and Petra and Peter...I devour them!

Don't read this book if you haven't read "Shadow of the Hegemon" (which is preceded by "Ender's Shadow"). And if you haven't read "Ender's Game" yet, stop here and buy that instead!

Two things to point out, though:
1) This book does not end the "Shadow" series, and so far as I can tell the next book hasn't been published yet! So, while this book doesn't exactly leave you hanging, it doesn't resolve the story, either.
2) My only real complaint with these books are the love stories. I bought into the concept of battle school kids easily enough, and if you forget how old the characters are the story moves along fine. But I found that every time I remembered they're not yet 15, I recoiled a wee bit. I also note, however, that Card seems to realize this, and doesn't remind the reader about age very often.

Definitely another great addition to the "Ender" series - I can't wait for the next one!

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good story

I’ve internalized the Ender’s Game quartet for over 20 years, so I was excited when Bean’s parallel stories came out. The narration is always good, not sure how Stefan didn’t notice that Gabrielle was pronouncing Achilles’ name wrong throughout the whole story. Each time she said it wrong, I cringed. So I guess my cringing muscles have been well exercised. But I’ve listened to the entire Shadow saga over a dozen times, so I’m sure I’ll be back again in a few months.

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Not a fan of the music

Five-star all around. The only annoyance is the music between chapters, and sometimes sections within a chapter.

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another brilliant performance

great audiobook. the story is more earth side focused which was less to my liking, I just prefer space haha. but it does make real life politics appear dumb, which it is.

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