Shadow of the Hegemon

By: Orson Scott Card

Narrated by: David Birney, Scott Brick, Gabrielle de Cuir

Length: 12 hrs and 47 mins

Publisher's summary

Ender's Game told the story of the boy "Ender" Wiggin and his hard-won victory over an alien race that would have destroyed the Earth and all of humanity. But Ender was not the only child in the Battle School. He was just the best of the best. In Ender's Shadow, Orson Scott Card told the story of another of those precocious generals, the one they called Bean - the one who became Ender's right hand, his strategist, and his friend.

And now Card continues Bean's story, and finally tells a tale long awaited by millions of fans. At last we learn what happened on Earth after the destruction of the Hive Queen's worlds, after humanity no longer had a single enemy to unify the warring nations. This is the story of how Bean turned away from his first friend, Ender, and became the tactical genius who won the Earth for Ender's brother, Peter, who became the Hegemon.

Please note: This 2001 recording represents the technology of the time when it was produced. This is currently the best available source audio from the publisher.

Browse more titles in the Ender Wiggin series.

©2000 Orson Scott Card

Great Story, Poor Performance

I'm a huge fan of the Ender series, and I have had the good fortune of listening to the entire series thus far on audiobook (which as Card says is his preferred format). This is another fantastic story involving Bean, who is now living on Earth after the Formic War.

Unfortunately, the production quality of this audiobook is extremely poor compared to the previous books in the series. Initially, the audio was very poor quality and the volume was very low. While the audio levels eventually became normal again, the audio quality was often very poor with certain voice actors.

Multiple mispronunciations plagued this performance, which varied from minor to major distractions. The word Hegemon (being the title of the book, no less) was mispronounced throughout the entire audiobook, and was crudely dubbed over with the correct pronunciation by what sounded to be a different actor.

Finally, the name of the antagonist was severely mispronounced throughout the book, with the exception of a few correct pronunciations strewn intermittently throughout the performance. Achilles, the Battle School failure who later became involved involved in global politics, was pronounced phonetically, instead of with the correct French pronunciation "a-SHEEL". This pronunciation was made very clear in Ender's Shadow, so it was very hard to become accustomed to the mispronounced version. At first, I thought that it was being mispronounced because the character being spoken through did not know the correct pronunciation, but I soon realized that was not the case. The same voice actor would pronounce it correctly in one part of the book, then completely the opposite in a later part of the book.

In summary, I would greatly recommend this book, but do be aware of the audiobook's multiple problems. I am very surprised that this has not been addressed yet, and I hope it is republished in the future.

An easy five-stars

The writing style of "Ender's Game" sort of petered out of the latter three books -- for the most part -- but it comes back in full force in "Shadow of the Hegemon".

I enjoyed the entire Ender series, but I know others who didn't even finish "Speaker for the Dead" -- never mind "Xenocide" or "Children of the Mind". If you're a member of that group, THIS is definitely the book for you!!!

"Shadow of the Hegemon" takes us right back to the end of the war with the buggers, which was a little weird having finished the Ender series because it's quite a jump back in time. If I had it to do over again, I don't know that I'd listen to this book before "Speaker for the Dead"...but I might try to listen to the two concurrently.

I can't wait to start "Shadow Puppets" (the next Bean book)!

Worth Reading

This book is a good read, however it may get a bad wrap by some because it is not as good as Enders Game. If you LOVED the Enders Game series then you should enjoy the Shadow books as well. If you were only half hearted about the preceeding books, however, these are not worth your time. Also, regarding the previous post about the pronunciation of the name "Achilles": in the first book of this series (Enders Shadow) it discusses the fact that the name is Dutch which is why it sounds diffrent from the way you are used to hearing it.

Annoying music between chapters

Love the Ender’s series, only complaint about this audio book in particular is the annoying music in between chapters.

Pronunciation

One of the narrators doesn't know how to say Achilles or Hegemon. They tried to fix the Hegemon issue by replacing words or sentences with a completely different recording with all mixed up levels. The female narrator did a much better job than she did in Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow where she made me hate Valentine so much.

Story is not as rad as Ender's Game or Ender's Shadow. If you like the characters from these books and loved the part of 'Game where Peter/Valentine are becoming noted commentators, you'll really love this.

Great book! Weird issues though.

This is a wonderful book and I highly recommend it (especially if you have enjoyed the other Ender/Bean books). I took one star off the performance rating for two reasons:

1) There is extremely cheesy midi music between each chapter. My wife and I literally laughed out loud every time there was a chapter change.

2). SEVERAL times during this book it was clear the narrator mispronounced "Hegemon" and they had to re-record someone else saying it correctly. As a listener it would pull me out of the experience when I would be happily listening to a portion of the story and every time they said "Hegemon" it was in a different voice.


Otherwise---This book is as fantastic as the others!

Good book, bad recording

The readers are good, but sounds like it was ripped from a cassette tape. Not up to audible quality.

Excellent book, well read

Only one thing kept me from giving this a 5 star review; the soap opera music between chapters was irritating. The idea to have a medical interlude isn't a bad one, but if your going to use it, it should better match the tone of the story. Preformance was excellent otherwise.

Great story, bad job editing, bad music

What made the experience of listening to Shadow of the Hegemon the most enjoyable?

The story is well written and mostly well read, but the edits/updates were poorly done. The voices don't match and the edits were only a few words in the middle of a sentence, giving the effect of jarring your focus away from the story and onto the edits themselves. Also, the music was terrible. It would have been much better without music.

One personal pet peeve, the author talks about the character putting another "clip" into their pistol...it's a magazine, not a clip. The slang term is "mag".

Who was your favorite character and why?

no favorite

Would you listen to another book narrated by the narrators?

yes, overall the production was good

If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?

don't know, don't care :-)

Any additional comments?

The entire series is enjoyable, but these edits and the music are not well done.

great story

another excellent story, but sometimes distracted by careless editing in the audio production. I was surprised/ disappointed by that.

these are expensive editions, and should at least have a professional feel.