Shadow of the Hegemon

The audiobook recording of Shadow of the Hegemon comes across as a work in progress. Each CD ends with an annoying bit of silence. (Uh, it's fairly obvious when the CD ends.) The book starts with a short random introduction. Achilles is one of the main characters, yet he is inconsistently pronounced with an English or French pronunciation. And finally, there are a number of places where you can here a different voice "correcting" a few words (often involving the word Hegemon.) These seem to be minor editing issues that should have been corrected, for other then this editorial flubs, the performers do a great job in acting out the book.

The book deals with the plight of Achilles to kidnap battle school graduates and take over the world. In the afterward, the author describes this as a game of risk where a power can seemingly rise out of nowhere. That sounds like a great book. However, that is not this book. This seemed to be a rather pedestrian thriller about Achilles attempts to kill Bean, together with Bean's attempts to rescue Petra. Achilles kills everyone who makes him look bad, and Bean got him kicked out of battle school (as well as asking people to kill Achilles on the streets of Rotterdam.) Petra was Bean's friend at battle school and a brilliant mind, as well as a source of bait for Bean.

Achilles, however, is the heal of this book. His character comes across as very one-dimensionally bad. However, things always seem to go right for him, and he manages to get in positions of great power. The book would have been better served if there really were characters at play guiding nations to power. Instead, we have a guy that can broker a peace between India and Pakistan solely to let China take over India. Even for fiction, it is not believable.

Though the main story flops, the novel does have its good points, primarily in the area of character development. The Wiggin family (especially the parents) play a bit role in the story, yet there relationship dynamics come more alive here than they do in Ender's Game. (While this is fairly irrelevant to this book, it does help the series as a hole.) Petra and Bean both get an emotional edge to their analytical minds, and are well set up for a romance in later novels.