I liked Advent Rising, if only because it might very well be the last story Orson Scott Card ever worked on where the hero was not (at one point) a boy genius who saved the world by proving he was smarter than everyone (and, in general, ignoring all but the most basic of strategy).
Don't get me wrong, I loved Ender's Game (and enjoyed the Shadow books until Bean and Petra started boinking. That just seemed weird and creepy), but the man has run out of stories. Case in point: He did an (Ultimate) Iron Man comic. It was Ender's Game, with trace levels of alcohol and powered armor instead of spandex onesies.
Hopefully Empire will not involve children. At all. When Card avoids Children, he writes fun stories (The Worthing Saga, even if it was the percursor to his retelling of The Book of Mormon for Homecoming).