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The Last Shadow

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The Last Shadow

By: Orson Scott Card
Narrated by: Emily Rankin, Gabrielle de Cuir, John Rubinstein, Judy Young, Justine Eyre, Kirby Heyborne, Orson Scott Card, Scott Brick, Stefan Rudnicki
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About this listen

Orson Scott Card's The Last Shadow is the long-awaited conclusion to both the original Ender series and the Ender's Shadow series, as the children of Ender and Bean solve the great problem of the Ender Universe—the deadly virus they call the descolada, which is incurable and will kill all of humanity if it is allowed to escape from Lusitania.

One planet.

Three sapient species living peacefully together.

And one deadly virus that could wipe out every world in the Starways Congress, killing billions.

Is the only answer another great Xenocide?

This program is read by Emily Rankin, Gabrielle de Cuir, John Rubinstein, Judy Young, Justine Eyre, Kirby Heyborne, Orson Scott Card, Scott Brick, and Stefan Rudnicki.

A Macmillan Audio production from Tor Books

Adventure Military Science Fiction Space Opera
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This was, sadly, a wasteful end to a series that became increasingly dull as it progressed.

The mystery, answers and excitement one could hope to get from the continuation of the descolada storyline is nowhere to be found. It just ends with an abundant amount of irrelevant characters who don't serve the plot, a new "threat" that's wildly insignificant and no actual answers.

Card's explanation is that to keep it realistic, some questions in life and science, and thus the novel, are never answered. Although true, the series itself isn't founded upon realism as is, and this just signifies lazy writing to me.

Small shout-out to the narrators, to end on a positive note.

Wasteful

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I thought Orson Scott Card was finished with the Ender and Shadow sagas, so I became curious when I discovered The Last Shadow. Somehow I felt it was weaker than most of the other books in the series.

Each chapter begins with (usually) a long dialogue, and it’s not always clear either who are talking, or the actual point of the dialogue.

The story also has rather many protagonists, This can at times be somewhat confusing.

In general I found this book a disappointment, and I would not have missed it if it was never written. I would much rather have seen Orson Scott Card write the last book in the Alvin Maker series.

Too much talk and too many protagonists

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I dont know where to start...

I grew up with the original enders game and speaker series and had high hopes for the conclusion to the enderverse, but this was incredibly disappointing.

After such a long wait to find out the origins of the virus and who created it... we get nothing.

Card instead decided to introduce more arbitrary characters and creatures on top of his already very packed cast. I Truly struggled to care about yet another modified human sub species and the hyper intelligent birds.

If this was a spin off or an in-between book I dont think I would have disliked it as much as I do, but since card decided to make this the final title in the series I cant help but feel shafted.

I have listend to the author notes at the end of the book and I feel cards reasoning for not giving a proper conclusion to the virus storyline to be a cop out for lazy writing. Card saying he wanted to keep it realistic and that in life we dont always get answers, is nothing short of insulting.

A Disappointing End

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So much time spent on characters that end up insignificant. Also, the story is so outrageously random, it took a while to take in how bad it was

Bad story, useless characters

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I get why others don’t love this. It was a long time coming and we all had years to decide how it “should” come together, and we heard how Orson struggled to bring it all together and brought our own expectations to the book rather than taking it on its own terms. It is intelligent, clever with strong characters of every type. It provokes thought. It resolves things as life is resolved rather than a Disney style story resolution. It values people of all kinds as they should be, and only mocks the unthinkingly vicious and cruel, with the emphasis on ‘unthinkingly’. I loved this book. Thanks Orson.

I loved it

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