posted
Hear me out true believers before you pillage me. I loved the Ender's books and already have posted a thread dedicating how much I cared and how much they changed my life. The problem I see with Shadow of the Hegemon is that the whole thing ends up hinging on whether or not Bean finds and decodes the little picture of the dragon. Each of the books were utterly believable in the context of geniuses even super-geniuses except this one. I found it too hard to believe that Bean would have been like "Hey this one line is kinda out out sync with the rest of the picture and might contain a secret hidden message that I could decode." Granted the guy is supposed to surpass all human levels of intelligence but the text also says that the dragons on the end of the emails have become common place. How could they be sure which dragon would be the first one? Why would Bean, even if he got a funny feeling from the line that was off, look at the image so intricately as to discover some coded and hidden message. If I looked at one of these smileys for long enough and tried enough sequences I could find out it says "Kill your parents" when the dots are traded for vowels and translated out of Spanish or something. My point is not to rip on Card's writing, which is superb. And the extrapolation of Bean and Achilles into world players was certainly useful in context of the series. I simply thought that a condensed version of the book could have been placed into Shadow Puppets which I view as a far superior storyline. Now if you read this Card please do not take offense, my respect for you is great and I do not wish to degrade your work. Constructive critism is something everyone has to take, my point is that out of all the astounding novels in that Ender series that I can only point to one of them and call it average... Shadow of the Hegemon.
Also a contradiction in the text: Peter and his father once joke about the Hegemony starting to print its own money and having to keep it from actually hitting zero or all the banks will crash. Later Bean is in the taxi and when the driver scans the bill he gave him he thinks to himself that he should have paid with a Hegemony note. If the Hegemony doesn't print notes then why would Bean think this? I was dismayed to find this contradiction also made it into the paperback edition.
Posts: 21 | Registered: Apr 2005
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posted
"The problem I see with Shadow of the Hegemon is that the whole thing ends up hinging on whether or not Bean finds and decodes the little picture of the dragon."
Isn't that the wrong book?
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
I'd have to research the continuity issue on the currency, but mistakes happen. I don't think that would ruin a story. Nothing can be done about that now.
As far as Bean and the dragon picture, I can see how that would be difficult. I think I'll read that portion again and see what kind of plausibility I can gather.
Posts: 2523 | Registered: May 2000
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posted
I never understand why it isn’t rude to be so critical of someone on their own website. Sort of the whole coming into your house and saying your carpet is ugly, your dog smells, your wife is a bad cook, and your mother dresses you funny.
I loved the book and found the explanation in the book excellent.
Posts: 2845 | Registered: Oct 2003
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quote: the text also says that the dragons on the end of the emails have become common place. How could they be sure which dragon would be the first one? Why would Bean, even if he got a funny feeling from the line that was off, look at the image so intricately as to discover some coded and hidden message.
I haven't read SotH in a while, so I could be mistaken, but I thought that all the dragons, which as you say, have become very common in emails, were copies of Petra's. The whole point was that everyone passes on the same dragon, not make a new one. So Bean notices these identical dragons in everyone's email and being a little bit obsessive and expecting the jeesh members to try and contact him in some subtle way and that email is one of few luxuries which they might have access to, he decides to analyze it. He didn't have to know which was the first dragon, they should all have the code. I don't really find it to be more amazing than other things Bean does through out the course of the series, but that's just my opinion.
posted
Well, other people had started putting their own dragons on. But yes, the original would probably be more common than some of the others. But logically, there are easy ways to figure out which had been around longest, particularly in a world where everyone relies on the nets for news and information.
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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posted
I spent half the text of my little note detailing how I adore Card and his work and I don't think I peed all over his carpet like a rude dog.
Posts: 21 | Registered: Apr 2005
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posted
In FormerlyEmpty's defense, this is a forum for fans to discuss Card's works. If we can't be critical (without being insulting, of course), then it just becomes a bunch of people telling each other how much they love his books, over and over again. That would be a bit boring.
Posts: 1569 | Registered: Dec 2004
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posted
page 95 (paperback version I don't know if that matters) Carlotta "Oh, these stupid superstitious good-luck dragons. There must be a dozen different dragon pictures now."
Any way I'm sorry I ever posted my point was the drawing even looked like "noise" (page 96) to Bean at first even when the right part was isolated. Sorry.
Posts: 21 | Registered: Apr 2005
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Doh. I am forced to admit that I breezed through most of the Ender books. They just couldn't hold my attention. Bean is much more interesting to me :<
Posts: 169 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
Bean also always had the ability to interpret signs in his mind without realizing it. I think that might be why he looked to the dragons. That and he was looking for any sign at all, the passage helped too.
Posts: 74 | Registered: Mar 2005
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Cheap answer: Geniuses aren't like us regular people and they therefore communicate at levels we cannot understand.
Yeah, right.
Real answer: Petra had to get a message out PAST ACHILLES. so it had to be a code that would look like a code to Bean, but NOT look like a code to Achilles. I sweated over this a long time, but settled on the "message in a bottle" theory. The disguise of the message was more important than its likelihood of reception. Petra did it out of FRAIL HOPE and a desperate need to do something, even if it was likely to turn out to be useless.
Bean might well NOT have noticed it. But he did. And then I had a book. In the alternate realities where he did not notice it, he doesn't marry Petra because she's dead, and Achilles rules the world. I didn't like those alternate realities.
Remember, you live in the world where it just happened that Gorbachev was head of the soviet union so Russian tanks did NOT crush the eastern european nations as they played for freedom and Yeltsin was NOT destroyed when he stood up in Moscow to defy the tanks. When things as unlikely as that really happen, can't I now and then just have something good but unlikely happen NOW AND THEN?
Posts: 2005 | Registered: Jul 1999
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quote: can't I now and then just have something good but unlikely happen NOW AND THEN?
as in, in the stories? or in real life? methinks having a bajillion (give or take .999999999 of a bajillion) best selling novels is pretty darn good/unlikely.
...much like you deciding to use my title for your next book, "Ender on ice!"
Posts: 93 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
That's that whole "fiction has to be truer than life" quandry. I remember not being caught up on that point of the story. I think it had something to do with Bean's incredible subconscience working the issue underneath his conscious thought.
Posts: 2523 | Registered: May 2000
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posted
I like the genious answer... Hehehe, he is the smartest person ever and picks up subtle things. Like the attack on him and suri.
Posts: 86 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
We haven't mentioned Bean's (possibly) biggest clue, which was Ender's army was Dragon, and the poem said something like "lucky end for them and you" which is a deviation from what those annoying little messages that i despise usually say (if you don't pass this on to 10 people you will have bad luck for the rest of your life and never have a boyfriend and so on).
Posts: 464 | Registered: Jul 2004
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And yet ... I didn't pass them on and I have never had a boyfriend. Unless you count ... oh, never mind.
Posts: 2005 | Registered: Jul 1999
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I must have missed a chain letter somewhere. It's been like five years since I've dated anyone
I was with a young girl in High school for a week and then a young girl in community college for a month. Like OSC (I think), no boyfriends Posts: 169 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
When the story line started to develop about the letter I wasn't sure if OSC would pull it off or not. What added legitimacy to the symbol thread was the fact that Bean did not immediately resolve it and that Sister Carlotta is the one that sparked the conversation which led to Bean looking more closely at the puzzle. Often times it takes someone to verbalize something before an idea is sparked.
Posts: 33 | Registered: Apr 2005
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posted
I was forgetting Sister Carlotta's role in this. OF course! She was such a holy woman, it was obviously a miracle that she prodded Bean to understand the coded message! Now it's all completely believable.
Posts: 2005 | Registered: Jul 1999
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