Did the characters, who had earlier made the novel very entertaining through their subtlety, all suddenly become very stupid by the time Shadow Puppets was released? The novel was disappointingly predictable, and for someone who “is the smartest person in the world with the record to prove it”, some of the mistakes made by Bean (and Peter, for that matter) are painfully predictable.

The same phenomenon occurred with Ender in the later novels of the main “Ender’s Game” series. It’s as if Card’s characters flare out as they age.