Beanie Weenie

So I finished Orson Scott Card's Shadow Puppets this past weekend. I stuck with the the three direct sequels to Ender's Game and thought they were pretty OK. They tended to get very science fiction-y without leaning as much on the political implications addressed in the first book. For the most part, I enjoyed the first two books in the parallel sequels (or whatever you want to call them) which filled us in on the character Bean before, during, and after the events in Ender's Game. But I seriously had to muscle through Puppets. It was the first time that I felt Card was really forcing his Mormon (read: conservative) politics on me as a reader, and he did so far from seamlessly. Every time he starts on frozen embryos and such it took me right out of the story. Then there were the incredibly awkward bits of dialogue between Peter Wiggin and his parents, often featuring bizarre sexual innuendo. Was that supposed to be comic relief?

Anyway, I see that there's yet another book in the series, Shadow of the Giant, which I assumed was coming based on the crappy cliffhanger at the end of Puppets. Has anyone else read this far in the series? Part of me wants to see how he wraps the various story arcs up, but part of me feels he's really phoning it in as he wraps up this series. I know Card is capable of some really compelling--or at least entertaining--writing. I'm wondering if anyone out there agrees or disagrees with my assessment of this book, and whether anyone has bothered with Shadow of the Giant.