Philotic Web

I'm like Bean, I watch everybody! Ok, I'm not Bean, but you get my point. And also, I'm bored, thats why I'm always on.

So hard to choose, but Shadow was just a bit more thrilling.

For some reason I feel hurt every time someone says they like Ender more than Bean....

After finishing Speaker, I'm tempted to change my opinion but my liking for Speaker wavers. Sometimes I like Speaker, and sometimes I don't. I can't connect it to EG or Shadow anymore; it's SO different. The philotes and aiua stuff went over my head a little bit when I first read about it.

I'm going to stick to Shadow then because of my loyalty for Bean.

I have always felt more pity for Bean, and I feel like he is a more realistic character, one that shows true courage in light of everything that is stacked against him. He brings up the courage to leave Petra, when he knew that both he and Petra loved each other to death and that they would both feel pain, but because he hoped that Petra would get on with her life. But in his sacrifice, he sealed his fate that Petra would no longer be alive if the cure to Anton's Key was every found, and all he would be able to do is cry over her grave. He always thought himself as the most selfish, but his decision shows he may just be the least selfish of all.

Ender, on the other hand, eventually has everything basically handed to him. He carried the burden of his billions of murders, and yet found happiness and lived a long life: 3000 years. Even when he died, he is reincarnated, only that he takes the form of another body, and only carries part of his former intelligence and personality. But he will always know himself, since Jane now remembers Peter and carrying the soul of Ender, and since Jane is immortal, he will never truly lose any knowledge, or ever truly die.

Ender is immortal, but Bean not only has to suffer with his exile for what could be a thousand years, but also has to come home to find everyone he knows dead, including the only woman he ever loved, if he ever comes back home at all.

I don't know what will happen in the last book, but I've had a massive amount of difficulty finishing the Shadow series, since I could only bear reading one chapter in one sitting, for it was much too depressing. I hope that in the end, the loose ends of the Battle Schoolers are reunited, but I know that with vital people amongst them missing, that the ending for any of them will never truly be happy.

...I think the whole test tube baby crawling into toilets to hide... seemed... well, like a little bit of a reach.

I think that Jane taking Ender and them into "Outside" is even more of a reach... but I love both series. Shadow is lots of entertaining fictional world politics, and Speaker is Sci-Fi generated philosophy. Both are very deep and interesting.