Made me question what I thought I liked about Ender's Game. Like a Dan Brown book, it manipulates you into reading onwards in order to find out what the hell was going on in the first chapters -- even as you suspect more and more strongly that it's not going to be worth it in the end. Hokey space soap opera.

I never expected Ender's Game to be so damn engrossing when I finally got around it last January. I certainly wasn't expecting I would even read anything written by Orson Scott Card ever, considering his homophobic stance which had personally offended me. However, I wasn't quick to dismiss his literary contributions to the science fiction genre, so I put aside my negative bias and bought the Ender Quartet series.

And I'm glad I gave myself the chance to do that because I can honestly say that two books later into the series, what Card accomplished in both Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead has made me into a massive fan.

Unlike its predecessor, Speaker for the Dead is more humane in scope, focusing on the empowering choice of peace and tolerance whilst Ender's Game dealt with war and annihilation of a species that threatened our own.

Andrew "Ender" Wiggin is no longer the sole and primary focus of the story though his importance is still pronounced; but in a different sense from his destroyer days. Set three thousand years later after the bugger wars, Ender is no longer that prodigy child who won the war for humanity's survival; he's a man in his thirties who traveled the stars for so long that he never had a chance to feel at home. Together with his sister Valentine, Ender had seen humanity spread across the galaxies, and he had moved with them but as a Speaker; one who tells the truth about a person's life upon death. He is in fact the very first Speaker since space travel has slowed down his ageing process, and he wanted to once and for all discard Ender by speaking on behalf of the dead to impact their histories on the living. This is the perfect form of penance for Ender, and the only people aware of his identity are his sister and the sentient artificial intelligence Jane who sought him out herself and hoped one day that he could help human beings accept her kind.

Though Ender still plays a huge role in Speaker for the Dead, the story is focused on a human settlement called Lusitania which is a largely Catholic community that lives alongside a newly discovered species called "piggies". Ender was called to speak for someone's death in that place, a summoning by a suffering young girl named Novinha. But before Ender ever gets there, Novinha (who was now an adult) cancels the summoning, especially after she figures out a significant revelation about the piggies, and wants desperately to protect it to avoid bloodshed among the people she loves the most. Puzzlingly enough, Novinha's other two children have also called for a speaker, and this is when Ender knew that something troubling is brewing in the stifling confines of Novinha's family; that there is a corrosive wound that has made it essentially hard for both her and her children to move forward with their lives.

The book's plot goes twofold. On one hand, the anthropological examination of the piggies' culture and practices is zoomed in, enabling readers to understand this species in the human context but even that is already limited. With Ender's arrival, he served as an ambassador between humans and piggies, offering agreeable alternatives for co-existence between these two species. On the other hand, Ender's presence was also a powerful instrument that shattered the shackles that surrounded Novinha and her children. By speaking on behalf of their dead father, Ender exposed the painful truth and the healing process thus began. He had also unwittingly woven himself into the family's fabric, and perhaps in doing so he finally had a home to belong to after being a vagabond for so long.

Speaker for the Dead is an astounding follow-up that is drastically different from Ender's Game in tone, setting and execution, and yet in most ways it was also able to surpass its predecessor. It's a daring commentary on science and religion, challenging the limitations of both fields. It also served as a heartfelt testament about the freeing capacity of truth and compassion. It's a searing examination of what makes families grow together and communities prosper as one. The characters are memorable and sympathetic even when they do and say things that are more harmful that they thought (I'm of course referring to Novinha and her insistence to conceal the truth which cost her the love and trust of her own children).

And as much as I enjoyed Ender as a child in the first book, I was pleased to see him in this new role as Speaker, and that he is making amends from his past transgressions and in my eyes he has truly become a mender of worlds.


RECOMMENDED: 8/10
* A well-developed and earnest parable about forgiveness and acceptance set in a futuristic backdrop of moral ambiguities and social discord.

While Ender's Game is a solid piece of modern sci fi, the sequel falls all too short. 'Speaker' is preachy and allegorical, and the characters often devolve into simple mouthpieces for the author's opinions, which are numerous, long, and not particularly original.

While I do respect that every author has his own point of view, and that one should be able to glean some understanding from their books, such a heavy-handed case detracts from the story and characters as a whole. The suspension of disbelief should not be broken by the author's message; rather, the message should be communicated by carefully built characters and situations so that it emerges naturally and believably.

While in the first book the main character was often guilty of extended internal monologue, this underlined the character's personal journey instead of just pushing a preconceived worldview. The second novel has a transparency of motive that, for me, destroyed both believability and the central flow of the story. Card's belief is not a hindrance to his ability to write a good story, but his overbearing expression of it sadly is.

Lots of people have jumped on the Orson Scott Card hate-wagon these days. Reacting-as always with hatred and a remarkable lack of ability to think-to his "hate-speech" against gay marriage, some even suggested a mass boycott of the film version of Ender's Game (even though the author had sold film rights completely, and received not a penny from the profits of the movie).

After finishing Speaker for the Death, I am convinced that none of these people bothered to read anything that Card ever wrote. If they did, they would at least have to stop and think about his incredible, pervasive humanism. His love for his fellow man. His ability and desire to see the truth about a person, and in seeing this truth (even if it is ugly) to love him.

Speaker for the Dead is a novel of consummate artistry. On nearly every level, it works like a charm. Its science is fully believable, yet as far as my humanities brain can tell, it is still realistic and plausible. The characterization is brilliant. The family dynamics are so well described, it's scary. The pain and pleasure the characters feel is real and raw. And the love the author imbues in his words for all humanity (even those who look and act nothing like people), the acceptance he shows - through Ender - of moralities and customs that to an untutored eye look like barbarism, would seem to suggest to anyone with the capacity to think that this author is not someone you can simply categorize as a "hater" and have done with him.

It is constantly depressing to me how people have become mindless parrots of ideologies they don't fully understand , preferring to flap their jaws in trite platitudes instead of engaging with a person who has a different point of view, understanding him, and in doing so, coming to love him. If we all tried to be -and I include myself and all believing Christians in this- more, dare I say, humanistic, like Ender (Card), then the heart-shattering beauty of the Lusitanian miracle could be more than merely a science-fiction parable.

As far as I'm concerned, any novel that so effortlessly addresses questions of existence, beauty, morality, faith, and love is worth reading. No matter what you think of the author's personal views or professed religion.

**notes after a second read**

The book holds up. It's really, really good. I'll have some thoughts on it in a forthcoming episode of my podcast, Fantasy for our Time. Keep an eye out if you like...

THE FEELS, MAN.

This book has all the feels. There were tears. I don’t know what to do with myself right now tbh. Bittersweet to the max. I love this book, I love it so much, I love it even more (maybe) than I love my precious Ender’s Game which has a cozy home on my favourites shelf. It put me through the emotional wringer more than anything I’ve read in the past year.

It is just so… complete. That’s the best word I have to describe these books. Complete characters- characters so complete and whole that you feel awkward calling them characters not people (fucking Ender. And Valentine...! I was unreasonably happy by their impending reunion at the end, and by the fact that they would once again be more or less the same age and Ender would get to know his nieces and nephews and have a real family together again and with Novinha and Ela and... oh, there was just too much. And then the whole thing with Jane, and things not being the same again between her and Ender- my heart is broken.). Complete worlds- worlds so detailed and casually referenced and slowly fed to you, world-building on the level of Tolkien or Cordwainer Smith. It’s just. All. So. Fucking. Complete.

Happy part over. Here we come to the part of the review Orson Scott Card terms “the homosexual agenda.” Because I can’t review a Card book without talking about his uberfamous homophobia. As a bisexual, it’s hard to forget that the person who wrote the book currently in my hands, head, and heart thinks I’m an abomination. In fact, Ender’s Game & Speaker are both so sensitively, wisely, and compassionately written, rich with empathy, that I struggle to understand how someone so homophobic could have written them. It’s just so incongruous.

In spite of what bell hooks says, I firmly believe authors and their works are too intimately connected to look at in isolation, and I can’t read Card’s writing without being hyperaware of his homophobia.

And he just sounds so incredibly moronic when he talks about gays that it’s hard to believe he actually wrote something as brilliant as Speaker. It’s like you say the prefix “homo” and his mind is wiped of all rational thought. Like, in the past he's compared the legalization of gay marriage to courts deciding that “blind” and “sighted” people are “the same” and therefore blind people should be able to drive cars too. Orson, honey. Blind people can’t drive cars because it’s dangerous. Because they could kill someone. If I marry a girl, will you die? Let’s try it. I’m curious.

It’s all the more annoying because, while we’re discussing minorities, I really love how Card writes female characters. It’s a common stereotype- and it’s *true*- that male science fiction writers (aka 99% of science fiction writers) treat female characters like props or attractive wallpaper or sex vessels. They’re often clumsy and unrealistic. Not here. No, I couldn’t ask for better female characters. Card has female characters in positions of authority. He has them be savagely witty, or out-reasoning their male peers in class, or being brilliant scientists and philosophers. And he doesn’t make a big deal out of those things- it’s just natural. In short, he treats women like human beings. This is annoying because I think highly of Card for this.

Orson Scott Card’s books changed a whole generation of people who grew up with them. Like Ender, he “wrote a bestseller that spawned a humanistic religion” in some ways. His character is the ultimate empath, the only one who can truly understand why others do what they do, who can find compassion for anyone, even those who are so different from himself- even other species who have murdered his fellow humans. And he doesn’t try to change them. That’s why he becomes a speaker for the dead- because that influence gives him so much responsibility. How can Card not see the irony here, that he wrote a character capable of such empathy, capable of seeing things through others’ eyes, when he himself is so clearly unwilling or unable to do the same?

I don’t know what I think about the answers to those questions. I struggle with the fact that I love this book. But I do- I can’t deny it. I wish, so much, that one of my favourite authors were different, and I feel uncomfortable loving this book so much, but there it is. So it is with a heavy, reluctant, guilty heart that I give this book five stars. It’s that good, that I can’t justify any other rating even though I want to.

In three words: complex, epic, profound.

"'This is how humans are: We question all our beliefs, except for the ones that we really believe, and those we never think to question.'"

Challenge: #ColourMeReadChallenge

Confession: when I see a book with a complicated-looking character list at the beginning and a family tree, my heart sinks a little. I've never really enjoyed books that have such complex relationships that the author includes a genealogical chart, and to be honest I found Speaker for the Dead a bit hard to get to grips with at first because of this. For one thing, the characters all have very long names, as well as nicknames (because, y'know, their names are so long). The second reason I didn't warm to the story at first was that it is SO different from Ender's Game. Admittedly, I read Ender's Game a while ago and so can't quite remember the specifics, but I do know that I loved the characters and was therefore sad to find most of them missing from the sequel.

However, once I'd grasped people's/Piggies' (the 'alien' race introduced in this story) names and their relationships to one another, I became engrossed and read this much quicker than I'd anticipated (even though I was buddy reading this with Marion, oops!). Actually, I think I can pinpoint the moment where things started to get more entertaining and enjoyable to read, and I'm pretty sure it was the 'moment' that Ender shared with little Grego (*snorts with laughter*).

As much as I adored Ender's Game, Speaker for the Dead is so much more complex, and much more layered and richly detailed. The religion aspect didn't really do anything for me, but I thought the anthropology/science side was fascinating (and a bit weird). I also didn't care for the relationship that developed between two of the characters near the end of the story - although I guess it was hinted at earlier, I still thought it was a bit odd.

Overall, this was a very enjoyable and philosophical read, and the fact that the next book is called Xenocide both intrigues and scares me! Although there were some parts of Speaker for the Dead that I didn't quite like and I thought that it started quite slow, my gut feeling was to round up from 4.5 to 5 stars for my rating, rather than rounding down.

Recommended for: people who want to read a profound sci-fi novel that has a host of memorable characters.

~~~~~
Review also posted here.

n  “No human being, when you understand his desires, is worthless. No one's life is nothing. Even the most evil of men and women, if you understand their hearts, had some generous act that redeems them, at least a little, from their sins.”n

Speaker for the Dead is the sequel to the massively popular Sci-Fi novel from the 80s - Ender's Game and one that has largely been overshadowed by its predecessor. While it was still popular it got nowhere near to the original in both readership or ratings which is interesting because this was the story Orson Scott Card actually wanted to tell from the beginning. It talks about the discovery of another alien species thousands of years after the xenocide and the way mankind decides to deal with it.

Looking back it seems overly clear as to why there is such a large divide between the two because for the most part Speaker for the Dead has absolutely nothing in common with Ender's Game apart from using the events that occurred as a jumping board to tell a much more profound story about the consequences of ones' actions. If anyone were to expect a traditional series then they might be severely let down.

n  “This is how humans are: We question all our beliefs, except for the ones that we really believe in, and those we never think to question.”n

One is a fast paced and action packed thrill-ride appealing both to teenagers and adults. The other is a slow burn about humanity and their interaction with the unknown. The novel does its best to make you think and I feel like it comments on some very important topics that stay relevant even today. While it certainly is not for everyone and I have heard the word 'preachy' tossed about I believe that it is imperative for these things to be talked about. Works commenting on the nature of humanity will always be divisive and I find this to be perfectly fine. The people who it does click for begin to appreciate the book much more and it has the chance to be something more than just a piece of entertainment to consume. Things that make you think will inevitably stay with you longer.

Speaker for the Dead made me very emotional at times and I enjoyed the depiction of family relationships. I loved the exploration of fear, hate and of prejudice. I originally also loved the focus on languages and communication due to how Portuguese was used in the novel although I have since found out that the implementation of it was often objectively wrong and badly done. Interestingly this is only visible to people who actually know something of the language because as an idea it was brilliant. It just seems like Orson Scott Card was utterly rubbish at Portuguese which can impact someone's enjoyment of the book.

n  “When you really know somebody you can’t hate them. Or maybe it’s just that you can’t really know them until you stop hating them.”n

The funniest thing after this long and rambly write-up is that I was not this positive while I was actually reading the book. It is only now months later when I discovered my mind keeps coming back to Speaker and there is a certain beauty in that. I can honestly say that at the time of reading I was not really feeling a lot of the second half and even though in my mind the positives far outweigh the negatives - I am still not sure what score to give it. I can not even fully articulate why I did not enjoy the second half as much at the time. I have just come to appreciate it much more in the following 4 months. I probably need a reread to fully solidify my thoughts.

What I can say without a doubt is that people should at the very least try this book out if they feel like something of this nature would be interesting to them because I do think that the novel is not often given a chance and it fully deserves one.

a poorly written colonialist ultra-conservative religious view of interaction between intelligent species. hated glorifying Ender's ability to see the truth that no one else could see. maybe the worst book I've ever read. would give it zero stars if I could. Hated every moment of reading this. wouldn't recommend to anyone for any reason at all.

Redime los puntos débiles del 1 , me gusto !

TEDIOUS. DENSE. UNNECESSARY. WHY IS THE ENTIRE NOVEL TOLD THROUGH INANE INNER/INTERPERSONAL DIALOGUE???
WHY IS CARD TELLING ME EVERYTHING INSTEAD OF SHOWING ME THROUGH CHARACTER ACTIONS???
HOW IS THIS BOOK ONLY 400 PAGES???
I FEEL LIKE 22 YEARS HAS PASSED.
THERE IS NO PACING.
THERE IS NO MAIN CHARACTER.
THERE IS NO VILLAIN.
THERE IS ONLY...DIALOGUE.

SAVE YOURSELF. SKIP THIS ONE.

This is formally a sequel to Hugo and Nebula-winning novel Ender’s Game, which also won both these awards. It can be read as a standalone. Moreover, the author sees it as a more important book than the first one. I read it as a part of the monthly reading for January 2025 at  The Evolution of Science Fiction group. I have to warn that later, after the author won multiple awards in the 1980s, he, as a Mormon is not only against homosexuality in his speeches but funded campaigns to ‘cure’ homosexuals, which made him a person non-grata in modern SFF fandom.

The story starts several thousand years after the first book. The tech hasn’t notably changed (there is some kind of a technological plateau) but with ships that can travel near the speed of light, so there are a lot of human-colonized planets. One of them, Lusitania, is unique, for there are sentient locals, the first aliens after Buggers with whom people established contact. Because at the planet Catholic colony had already been established, it was agreed that the colony will operate only within a fence, and all contact with (at what seems a Stone Age level culture) locals is limited to specialized people (initially only one) - Xenologers (Zenadores). The human contractors are not allowed to influence/uplift “Lusitanian Aborigines,” who are called piggies because they are like cartoon pigs walking on their hind legs. A tragedy happens – a xenologer is murdered (and his body desecrated by the piggies for no apparent reason.

To tell the true story of the deceased, a Speaker for the Dead is requested from the off-world, and this speaker is Ender Wiggin – from the hero and savior of humanity from the alien threat he was turned in the ‘worst person who ever lived’, a xenocider – this was done by his own writings (under a pan-name Speaker for the Dead), where he accuses both himself and humanity in xenocide. For the last 3000 years he traveled with his sister from world to world, where they (in disguise) tried to improve the world’s development path, and due to the time dilation, they are still relatively young. In 22 years Ender comes to Lusitania to prevent another xenocide.

I think that the novel is part of the best SF of all times, even if its author’s views are not to my liking.

An astonishing book. People weren’t kidding when they said this is nothing like Ender's Game.

Speaker For The Dead is so fraught with human drama, on occasion you would be forgiven for thinking you are reading a Southern Gothic mystery. This is also where things get interesting, since, to be honest, I didn’t really care for the characters all that much. When it comes to the human condition, and emotions, the author seems to be dealing in extremes here, even though he clearly has a lot of understanding or empathy for people. And that’s really at the heart of the novel, in which a new alien species has been discovered. Ender Wiggin’s role in this endeavour is basically to convince humans to see the aliens as “people” too (and not as aliens – since that was what led to the Bugger Xenocide). In essence Speaker For The Dead is a study in acceptance and cultural differences (whether you agree with everything it says is up to you).

I wasn’t expecting a lot from Speaker For The Dead, and to be sure, I did nit pick as I was reading it: this character is too whiny, oh that is just silly, etc. However, I simply couldn’t stop reading. The bits featuring Ender himself were really good, and if anything, he could have featured even more in the story. At one point, I was thinking to myself that this didn’t really even need to be a Science Fiction novel, to tell the story the author was telling, but I was wrong. This is Science Fiction, and it is good Science Fiction. And no, I’m not even referring to soft science here, but there is a compelling xeno-biological mystery that is integral to the story line. Not to mention the interesting take on time dilation, instantaneous communication and Artificial Intelligence (which, in this instance, should be a separate discussion). Conclusion: I’m not really qualified to write a review for a book like this.

There is a theme of redemption here, since Ender gets a second chance at dealing with an alien race (in a manner vastly different than portrayed in Ender’s Game). We also get to see what Ender’s final decision is/was regarding his promise to the Hive Queen at the end of Ender’s Game. Will Speaker be to everyone’s liking? I think not. In fact, I didn’t think it would be to my own liking, and yet I couldn’t put it down. Despite the issues that I had with the characters. Despite the occasionally ponderous pacing. Despite the complete and utter lack of any real (what you might call) action. I suppose this is what you might call “literary” Science Fiction. Despite, occasionally, not wanting to like the novel so, I would be the biggest hypocrite ever if I did not give it 5 stars. I was under its spell.