I just finished Shadow of the Giant, which I’d been planning on reading for over a year now but didn’t get around to until a co-worker loaned me the audio book.

Shadow of the Giant is the fourth and last book in Orson Scott Card’s “Bean” books, a four-book series that begins with Ender’s Shadow, a parallel book that happens simultaneously with Ender’s Game. Rumor has it that there is another book in the works, tentatively titled Shadows in Flight, which will pick up at the end of Children of the Mind (Ender #4) and tie the Ender series and the Bean series together.

First of all, this is not a bad book, especially in audio form. Card’s easy-to-read style lends itself well to reading it out loud, and the actors hired for the performance are top notch.

The only reader I didn’t like was used for Petra’s viewpoint—however, I don’t know in this case if it was the actress herself, the reading of the character, or Petra’s character that grated on my nerves. Petra seems overly whiny, and since she is the character that bolts this last book together, the novel feels overly sappy. Several times I felt an emotional response equal to what was happening in the book. This is okay. What irritated me was that the emotional responses came in Petra’s viewpoint. This speaks of Card’s ability in writing since I didn’t care much for Petra at all, but I was still involved emotionally with the story.

The main story arc involves the members of Ender’s jeesh who are left behind to deal with a post-Formic-war earth. Each nation who “owns” a former battle schooler has put these war heroes to work in setting up plans for conquering and domination. Shadow of the Giant is the story of how Peter Wiggin and the Ministry of Colonization use the battle schoolers to create a world government called the Free Peoples of Earth, with the Hegemon as its figurehead.

The politics in the book are largely believable and interesting. The drawback in the book, again, is Petra and Bean’s storyline as they scour the earth for their missing test-tube babies. While somewhat interesting, this storyline left me feeling as if the characters were over-reacting in most instances.

Readers familiar with the Ender books will recognize throwbacks to the final chapters of Ender’s Game and Card’s interstitial short story, “Investment Councilor,” which takes place in between Ender’s Game and Speaker for the Dead, and chronicles the origins of the A.I. named Jane and her first contact with Ender Wiggin.

Fans of the Bean books will enjoy Shadow of the Giant. It’s fast-paced, interesting, and written in Card’s characteristic sparse and enjoyable style. There’s not a lot of meat to the book, however, and it left me wishing I had spent that time re-reading Card’s better books like Ender’s Game and Ender’s Shadow.