I was very disappointed in this book. I'm a huge fan of the Ender Series, and was really looking forward to the ideas and creative story telling that Card seems to carry with him. However, I felt this book fell short of that. While his character development was on par, the overall story telling style left me unsatisfied. As other reviewers have noted, Card seemed to leave nothing to the reader's imagination. Every time I would start creating possibilities in my head, Card would tell me outright what was going on in a very obvious manner. The action portions and some of the twists were exciting and kept me engaged, but in general, I wouldn't say this is even a good work of his. Not a bad beach book, I suppose. It's a very easy read, and pretty easy to pick up on the story after a break in reading.