Shadow Puppets
by Orson Scott Card
This third book in Card's "Shadow" series has drifted a bit from the promise of the first book ("Ender's Shadow"). I shouldn't be surpised, though: the same thing happened in the initial "Ender" series. In this epsiode, we continue to follow the cabal of teenagers that pretty much run the world. We get pseudo-geopolitical intrigue, some moral wrangling between resposibility to self and to other, and (ugh) an examination into the true nature of love.
These books are quick enough reads that I'll probably read the next Shadow book when it comes out, but that's only because "I'm in". That's a bad strategy for investing in stocks, and probably an equally bad strategy for choosing books to read, but there it is.