Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card
December 14, 2002

Genre: Science Fiction

     Speaker for the Dead, by Orson Scott Card, is a continuation of the Ender saga, which started in Ender’s Game.

     After the elimination of the buggers, an alien race, in the Bugger War, Ender the Xenocide disappears, and the Speaker for the Dead arose; who tells the true story behind the War.  Now, many years later, another alien race has been discovered, the pequeninos, on the planet Lusitania.  Theses pequeninos, or rather ‘piggies’ for short, are strange and mysterious.  Xenologers from the colony of Lusitania have been studying them for several years, but they soon befall a terrible and torturous way of death.  Nothing could be accounted for the actions of the piggies.  It is up to the Speaker for the Dead to confront the mysteries and speak of the truth.

     Orson Scott Card takes a different approach on Speaker for the Dead from its predecessor Ender’s Game.  Instead of battles, war, and military training, Speaker for the Dead mainly bases and comprises of allegorical and even applicable themes of both philosophy and religion.  I can’t say I was thoroughly overjoyed at the drastic change from war to peace, excitement to melancholy and even the accentuated focus on religion, but Card vividly shows us real-life struggles and suffrages of the human race from a different perspective.

     I, personally, would not think of Speaker for the Dead to be a sequel to Ender’s Game, as both focuses are by far diverse from each other.  Although, they both focus on the main protagonist, Ender, the relevance of the novels does not follow the same train of concepts.

     Like numerous books, Speaker for the Dead has a slow beginning; taking much time to introducing new characters, settings, ideas and such.  The main characters are very well-developed.  Orson Scott Card took amazing care in making his characters very believable and three-dimensional; enabling a clear and vivid portrait of each and every one.  I’d also like to mention Ender.  The readers have watched him grow from a seven-year-old child in Ender’s Game, to a thirty-five-year-old man in Speaker for the Dead.  Readers immediately and most-certainly have instilled a sort of fondness for this character.  He has faced several trials through his life; being shunned by the world (or universe for that matter) for his deeds of killing off the buggers, enduring the isolation and his lost childhood, which had been taken from him thirty years ago.  Ender is the epitome of a character that readers are able to relate to.

     All-in-all, those who are looking for a clone or rehash of Ender’s Game will unlikely find such a thing in Speaker for the Dead.  Nonetheless, I’d highly recommend it for any science-fiction fan.  Although, I must admit, I am one of the few who wouldn’t mind an Ender’s Game rehash, but I’m also most thankful for such a daring approach.  Several say that Ender’s Shadow is what people sought in an Ender sequel, so I suggest picking it up, I will too, eventually, when I finish the Ender saga, then I will go into the enlightenment of the Mr. Bean.  Philosophical and powerful are both words that can describe a great literary piece such as Orson Scott Card’s Speaker for the Dead.

 - Bobo

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