I accept your challenge. Very well, where do I begin?
Ender's Shadow is a very bad and pretentious book. Like you, I was one pins and needles waiting to read ES; no doubt we both share a genuine love for Ender's Game.
When I read Ender's Shadow, I was filled with anger, outrage, and disappointment. There seems to be three discerning points concerning ES and I will go into all of them (or course).
First, there is new information about events that took place during Ender's Game. We learn about the legend of Ender Wiggin floating through the school, the creation and members of the Dragon Army, how main characters in EG interacted with one another, information on Graff, etc… While most of this information could have been fascinating, all of it is unfortunately skewed by Card's need to have Bean immediately related to it. Let, me remind you, this is originally was Ender's Game not Bean's. I was outraged to learn that Bean designed Dragon Army, that Bean could have taken control of the last battle, that Bean was smarter than Ender. (As a side note, can you tell me exactly why Card felt the need to explain that Bean was a have a percent smarter than Ender? There are some things the reader would have been better off not knowing. ). When Card wrote EG back in the 70 and subsequent 80's, he wasn't thinking of Bean doing any of the stuff he did. Basically, I felt while I read ES that Card was simply taking away Ender's glory and giving it to Bean to make some money.
Second, you claim that the integration of the two stories was awe-inspiring. I disagree, it was a sham. There were many times, where both stories were suppose to overlap and Card contrived ES to such a degree, my jar hit the floor. He did this through manipulative pretenses, ignoring Bean's actions that would suggest he wasn't superhuman, and just genuine lying. You disagree? Let me show some examples. Get out ES and EG. When Card wrote EG, Bean certainly did not create the Dragon Army but Card made him do so in ES. We are suppose to believe that Bean would be able to pick the perfect army without having a single one of Ender's friends or special practice friends? So all of Dragon army was great yet none of them participated in anything that would make them great. If Bean was to make the perfect army, why no Alai? What I am trying to say is, if Bean had complete discrimination as told in ES, then the EG army would not be what it was with no experienced people; that would be completely illogical. In EG a totally green army was believable because we were suppose to believe the army was rigged against Ender. In ES, Bean made the army even though the outcome doesn't reflect such a status. Another example of the manipulative pretenses that occurred frequently throughout the book would be when Bean would say something completely different than how he really felt (all in the spirit being polite Bean explained). After the Ender-Bonzo fight, Bean says, "Was it true that [Bonzo] had a whole bunch of guys gang up on you?" When we read EG, this line of dialogue made sense because Bean was supposedly not there and had no idea what happened. In ES, of course Bean was witness to events concerning the fight because Bean has to be involved in everything it seems. So, in ES, the justification for Bean to say something that makes no sense (according to Card) is that Bean was "faking ignorance" to respect Ender and keep the truth from him. Hmmm…to me that doesn't seem the best way for a subordinate to deal with his commanding officer. As Shawshank fans know, the truth shall set you free. My point being that because Card is forced to mesh these two stories together, Bean is constantly doing things that someone of his supposed intelligence would not do. I must also point out that these examples I gave are not isolates cases, it occurs constantly. Finally, in perhaps the most obvious and laziest technique that Card used when writing ES was to ignore dialogue and passages from EG that would disagree with ES. For instance, after the last Dragon Army fight, in EG, Ender walks out of the battleroom and returns to his room, after throwing his mattress out the door and lying down, Bean instantly knocks on his door. In ES, this timeline certainly doesn't fit. In ES, after Ender leaves the battleroom, then Beans leaves, walks back to Dragon's barrack, lies down, sees the transfer slip, gets on the computer, talks to his Dragon army about the transfer slips, walks to Rabbit Army and talks to a toon leader about Can Carby, the battle, and the future of battle school, and then he walks to Ender's room to see the mattress in the hall. When I bought ES, I wasn't aware that he was going to rewrite EG in the process.
So, at this point I have made the case that both the new information and the mesh of the two stories is inadequate and in fact, instead of creating a new story, Card has in some ways ruined a superior story all in the attempt to create an adequate one. However, now I must comment on the self-contained story of Bean and his quest to see if he is a genetically superior human being. Of the three points I have made in this review, this is the only one that is based on opinion. I didn't like it in DS9 when they Bashir genetically altered and I don't like it here. It takes away Bean's humanity and usefulness in the story. I have always heard that characters and their flaws are what drive stories. Flawed character's can grow in understanding, learn from mistakes, and yearn for something better. In ES, Bean has nowhere to go (except possibly to figure out why he is such a coward…which is never resolved). So instead of Bean doing anything, we just read as Bean calls everything stupid and says how he could do it better. Also, I found his amazing ability of perception just damn annoying.
All in all, I plan never to read ES again and when I read EG, I will ignore anything that I learned from ES. Ender's Shadow was a interesting idea but it seems to be that as Card wrote it, he became more and more desperate to have Bean actually do something until in the very last straw, Card practically turned Ender's Game itself over to Bean. What's next, rewrite ES, but this time have Fly Molo do everything? Ender's Shadow's friend? God help us.