{"id":21195,"date":"2023-05-07T17:36:23","date_gmt":"2023-05-07T21:36:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/?p=21195"},"modified":"2023-05-07T22:38:15","modified_gmt":"2023-05-08T02:38:15","slug":"the-last-shadow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/2023\/05\/the-last-shadow\/","title":{"rendered":"The Last Shadow"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>{4.5\/5} &#8220;They also demanded that I supply your real year of birth, since they did not believe my answer, upon which I supplied the birth certificate of the original Peter Wiggin. Try to remember his birthday. Because the real date of your entry into our universe is even less believable than that date in the distant past.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Last Shadow<\/strong> by Orson Scott Card, published in 2021<\/p>\n<p>The children and grandchildren of Dulian Delphinki, Bean, the Giant, are on the spaceship Herodotus. A hologram of Hyrum Graff appears to ask them to help save the human race. The intelligent virus known as descolada must be understood. They&#8217;ll start by asking scientists on Lusitania what they know.<\/p>\n<p>This is the sequel to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/2013\/11\/shadows-in-flight\/\"><strong>Shadows in Flight<\/strong><\/a>. It is intended to wrap up the entire <strong>Ender<\/strong> and <strong>Shadow<\/strong> series.<\/p>\n<p>I like how the descendants of Bean are called leguminids.<\/p>\n<p>It follows <strong>Shadows in Flight<\/strong> and returns to the scene of <strong>Speaker for the Dead<\/strong>. I was a bit disappointed that neither Ender nor Bean are in the novel. There is one relatively new character who has the personality of Ender, but he&#8217;s still trying to figure out who he is. It does feature Jane, also in a relatively new body.<\/p>\n<p>The novel is very enjoyable. As with the other novels in the series it&#8217;s about highly intelligent children, aliens with different points of view, and big questions. And, of course, it contains Card&#8217;s sparkling dialogue.<\/p>\n<p>Ultimately, it&#8217;s about being a good person.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve read 27 books by Card. I previously reviewed his novella <a href=\"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/2014\/11\/a-war-of-gifts\/\"><strong>A War of Gifts<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>{4.5\/5} &#8220;They also demanded that I supply your real year of birth, since they did not believe my answer, upon which I supplied the birth certificate of the original Peter Wiggin. Try to remember his birthday. Because the real date of your entry into our universe is even less believable than that date in the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[7,28,5,8],"class_list":["post-21195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","tag-book","tag-novels","tag-review","tag-science-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21195"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21195\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21247,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21195\/revisions\/21247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}