(written 24 April 2007)
This is one of the few books that I have read that gave me the need to cry. (besides the time sirius feel through the veil) OSC writes from bean's point of view when telling the tale of ender's game, and so there is added suspense because you know what is going to happen. Bean's impoverished childhood makes him emotionally detached, but when he gets to battle school and know more about ender, he almost emaluates him through bean's idolatry. Bean's hunger for and ability to gather information results in him probing into the battle school system, and being able to log in as a teacher. However, he did not play the mind game, and so did not allow Jane to make a philotic connection with him, unlike ender did, and so the teacher know less of his personality. (refer to Xenoxide)
Ender has more emotional understanding than bean, having elements of Valentine's character. Ender is therefore better at leadership and has more likeability than bean, and also had more friends than bean. It comes not as a surprise that ender is chosen to be commmander of Dragon Army, and eventually commander of the fleet sent to extinguish the buggers. Bean is sharper and more intelligent than any of the soldiers, despite being the youngest, and this allows him to grasp new concepts quickly but still have time left over to study earth's political situation and discover locke and demesthothenes, peter and valentine wiggin. It is therefore almost natural that bean was ender's backup, ahould anything have gone wrong, and he also took the role of watching out for other players but still continued to execute ender's strategies when he was occupied.
Bean has the courage and determination to seem brave, despite knowing that the fleet sent to kill the buggers was real, and not just computer graphics on a screen. It made the xenocide all the more chilling, knowing this, with the added emotional attachment, knowing that the fleet was composed of real soldiers being led to their sacrificial deaths by a bunch of children. Towards the end, Bean senses Ender's disppointment and exhaustion, although he doesn't feel it himself. I admire bean for his tenacity and determination to get over his shortcomings, like his size and age, or losing it when he gets nervous (haha a lot like me), making the most of what he has and trying to help and support ender in any way.
Although it felt a little bad-fic-ish in the middle, when OSC was filling up battle school plot gaps, because it sounded very repetitive, this book complements Ender's Game very nicely, especially if you have read Speaker of the Dead or Xenocide. You also get to know why ender is able to develop a philotic connection with the sole surviving bugger queen in this book. I like OSC because he gives a lot of backstory, the kind of thing you look for in fics, just that this is written by the author himself and so is 100% official, and so ruthlessly destroys bad theories. There is MORE backstory in Shadow of the Hegemon, which is sitting very nicely in the school library, a 30-second walk from my classroom :D, just that I'm reading Neil Gaiman's The Sandman Dream Country now, and was reading bio pt things before and the book day book is next in line.
