content: You loved Ender's Game, right?And even though the next couple of Ender-related books were more confusing and not of the same quality as Ender's Game, at last came Ender's Shadow, the parallel story of Bean. Terrific.Then came Shadow of the Hegemon.It is, literally, a shadow of the original talent and quality of the first five books. The dialogue is tedious, the story line pencil thin, and the plot has a huge Achilles' heel (pun intended).This is another example of a book out by an author (in this case Orson Scott Card) who must have been pressured to produce, because this baby needs more cooking.It will make no sense if you haven't read Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow. It hardly makes any sense at all. Beware!