Mucho más filosófico que el primero de la saga, mucho más reflexivo, no me llegó a impresionar como el primero (o el segundo, que es el mismo que el primero pero desde otro punto de vista).

Card claims that this is his masterpiece. He said that he only wrote Ender's Game so that he could write this. It's such a shame though that Ender's Game became such a hit, and Speaker for the Dead became its shadow.

Before I start with the serious part of the review, let me start with something that I can't seem to erase from my mind while reading this. The new alien species are called piggies. Piggies. The thing running inside my head was



and it stayed like that till the end. I'm not proud of it, but for me, Card wrote of a new alien species, in which they are pigs. Not so new to me.

Another thing running in my mind would be the word ramen. It kept appearing from time to time. Mr. Card, a ramen for me would be



I believe that this is my first time using pictures for my review. Might be my last time, but who knows what the future might hold.

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Like what 90% of the goodreads people say about this, Speaker is more of a philosophical novel, rather than a hardcore SF-war one. That didn't bother me, to be honest, because the issues tackled in the novel were quite interesting. There was not a dull moment in the novel, so that's a good start. The reason why I didn't like this though would be because of the bad ending. After such an amazing world building and character development, the ending was just terrible (for me). It felt rushed and incomplete. He could've made the novel a bit longer, considering how average the size is. It's either the novel was inadequate in size, or I was just wanting more.

Only two characters from Ender's Game were still present in this novel, Ender and Valentine. I really liked both characters, so I was thrilled to read more of the two. The novel was 90% Ender of course, and probably 5% Valentine. I'm not complaining much because Ender's one of my favorites, but the other characters were just not interesting to me. The main problem would be their names. I hated their names. They were made up and weird as shit. I hate those things, it hinders my ability to like a character. If I hate the name right from the start, odds are I'll hate the character itself. Come to think of it though, even if the characters had better names, I don't think I'd like them as much as some characters from Ender's though. Most of the characters here were rather flat and boring. They contributed a lot in the plot, but I couldn't see myself remembering them in the future.

Plot wise, this novel was above satisfactory. It didn't falter off at one point, so consistency was present. Chapter after chapter I was impatient to know what would happen next, and what would be the explosive ending I was expecting. I was really disappointed though. Even the secret of Pipo was terribly bullshit. After reading the whole novel to find out about it, it felt like Card gave me a piece of canned meat, after expecting a nicely grilled steak.

4/5 stars. Main problem would be the dull characters and terrible ending. Overall though, this novel was really great. The "journey" was good, but not enough to garner a 5 star rating. I really liked Ender's Game more, but I'm not saying don't read this, on the contrary, I'm also recommending this. Not sure if I'll read Xenocide right away, because the ending of this one doesn't make me want to know what's going to happen next, but I will read it probably next year (2015).

Deleted review

n  n
Christmas 2010: I realised that I had got stuck in a rut. I was re-reading old favourites again and again, waiting for a few trusted authors to release new works. Something had to be done.

On the spur of the moment I set myself a challenge, to read every book to have won the Locus Sci-Fi award. That’s 35 books, 6 of which I’d previously read, leaving 29 titles by 14 authors who were new to me.

While working through this reading list I got married, went on my honeymoon, switched career and became a father. As such these stories became imprinted on my memory as the soundtrack to the happiest period in my life (so far).

I really liked this book.
I’ve never read n  Ender’s Gamen.
I’ve never read any other Orson Scott Card.
But I will, because I really liked this book.

The overall premise is superb – mankind’s dark history with the buggers, their potential for redemption with the piggies, the mysterious Descolada plague, the precautions taken to protect the xenobiology making understanding the evolutionary leaps impossible... it’s fascinating stuff.

But it's the individuals who populate this world – Ender who is the very epitome of his race, the killer seeking redemption, the last Hive Queen, Jane, the insecure AI, Ender’s genius sister, Valentine, Novinho, the brilliant but bitter xenobiologist who Ender is determined to make accept his love – her dysfunctional family! and finally, there are the stars of the show – the piggies themselves – an alien race who rank up their with Hamilton’s Kiint as my personal favourites. Lots of sci-fi starts with a good idea or two – but very few have a cast like this.

It’s awkward, anguished personal stuff, wrapped up as a murder-mystery inside a scientific enigma, driven along relentlessly by a humble messiah.

My only complaint is the choice of names, the ‘buggers’ and the ‘piggies’. Let’s face it – these are bloody ridiculous names for well-crafted alien races.

One of the ways I judge a book is by how many moments remain behind afterwards, resonating with my understanding of the world. For n  Speakern, there are dozens – and they’ve lingered in vibrant, sparkling form.

The one I’ll never forget is the moment that gives Ender his purpose (and the book it’s title) – when he Speaks the Death of Marcão. It’s a scene that I knew was coming from the get-go, – a scene I tried to guess and second guess, and still found surprising, still found emotional and couldn’t have broken away from had my wife gone into labour while the house was on fire.

When the piggies ask a brothertree for wood – I was grinning like a loony!

When the piggies realize why Pipo and Libo hadn’t grown into Fathertrees – my heart broke for the murdering little aliens!

When Ender helped plant Human – my chest ached.

When they crack the descolada!
When Ender wins over Grego!
When Valentine comes to join the rebellion!
Olhado’s eyes!
When Ender marries Novinho!
When Ender buries the Hive Queen!
When Ender writes The Life of Human!

n  n    Speaker for the Deadn  n is the kind of book I was looking for when I started my Locus Quest and I’ve found it hard to resist buying n  Ender’s Gamen and n  Xenociden immediately. But those are the bad old ways – to find a new author I like and then devour their catalogue before moving on - that’s a habit I’m trying to break. So I’ll space out the Ender's Saga books – enjoy them over a few months (or maybe years?) – but I will definitely be reading them at some point.

(I've now read Ender's Game and Xenocide too and loved them both, so we're still going strong with one more in the core series to go)

Wat ons er toe aanzette om Speaker for the Dead te lezen was niet dat we graag een vervolg op het sterke 'Ender's Game' wilden lezen, maar wel dat een auteur er in geslaagd was om twee jaar na elkaar de Hugo-award én de Nebula-award (zowat de belangrijkste prijzen voor science-fiction) te winnen. Een unicum in de meer dan 70 jaren dat de prijzen bestaan.

Speaker for the Dead springt 3000 jaar in de tijd, wanneer de mensheid honderd planeten heeft gekoloniseerd en voor het eerst weer intelligent leven ontmoet na de uitschakeling van 'the buggers' door Ender. Om nieuwe genocides van buitenaardse rassen (xenocide) te vermijden heeft Starways Congress, dat de 100 werelden verbindt en leidt, strikte regels opgelegd over de omgang met buitenaardse rassen: zo min mogelijk beïnvloeding om elk ras zijn eigen evolutie te laten doormaken. De auteur werkt een theorie uit waarin omgangsvormen en mogelijkheden om samen te leven afgetoetst kunnen worden aan een hiërarchie van vreemdheid/verwantschap. Op de planeet Lusitania, waar het nieuwe ras op een unieke biologische wijze evolueerde, zorgt dat voor de nodige spanning, commotie en uitdagingen.

Orscon Scott Card schrijft in die setting een spannende en meeslepende roman, met sterk uitgewerkte personages, aandacht voor politieke spanningen, intermenselijke relaties en de uitdaging om een totaal vreemde biologie en cultuur te vatten. Card drijft de spanning op in de opbouw naar een plot waarin hij handvaten zoekt en aanreikt om samenleven met totaal vreemde soorten en nieuwe feiten mogelijk te maken. Misschien ietwat moraliserend, maar daarom niet minder goed gedaan.
Prima leesvoer, gestoeld op een relevant uitgewerkt spiegelbeeld van onze maatschappij, waarin samenleven met andere culturen en de zoektocht naar wederzijds begrip en gemeenschappelijke kenmerken, altijd al een uitdaging is geweest.

I've read The Ender's Game prequel series and am now working my way through Ender's Saga.

I'll be honest... this was completely different to the first book. My expectation was an action-packed sci-fi book with epic battles like the first. However, without giving too much away, that's not quite what happens in Speaker Of The Dead.

The epilogue was beautiful. No human being, when you understand his or her 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.

Five stars.

Retko se desi da drugi deo nadmaši prvi - a upravo je to slučaj sa Govornikom za mrtve. Enderova igra mi se veoma dopala, ali je Govornik ambiciozniji i maštovitiji roman. Bez obzira na obim (preko 400 stranica), pročita se za čas - Kard je odlično postavio priču i zna kako da zaintrigira čitaoca. Uz to - još jedan veliki plus - Govornik nije puka kopija prvog dela, već nudi originalnu priču koja se nadovezuje ali po strukturi i pristupu ne kopira izvornik.

Vreme je da napustimo Zemlju i da se otisnemo u svemirska prostranstva. Enderova igra je kultni roman po kojem je nedavno snimljen i vrlo dobar film o kome sam svojevremeno pisao za City Magazine. Govornik za mrtve (1986), u izdanju Čarobne knjige, nadovezuje se na događaje opisane u prvom romanu i nastavlja da prati život Endera Vigina (sada već trideset i petogodišnjaka), ali zapravo nije klasičan nastavak. Orson Skot Kard se ne zadovoljava time da ponovi formulu Enderove igre, već čitaocima nudi jedan sasvim novi svet koji valja istražiti. Kard svog odraslog junaka odvodi na daleku planetu na kojoj je otkrivena nova vanzemaljska rasa – naoko neodoljivo simpatični pekeninosi (praščići) koji, ispostaviće se, kriju mnoge mračne tajne. U pitanju je prilično obiman roman (preko 400 stranica), ali je toliko zanimljiv i vešto napisan da se, ako imate dovoljno slobodnog vremena, može pročitati za dan-dva. Ne čudi što je Kard za Govornika dobio prestižne nagrade Hjugo i Nebjula, a roman je toliko dobar da se mirne duše može preporučiti i onima koji ne vole naučnu fantastiku.

http://citymagazine.rs/clanak/4-u-1-p...

I consider this to be a perfect sequel to Ender’s Game and perhaps my favourite work of fiction- (this could have course been influenced by so many telling me it was a must read). The book explores the most important human issues of philosophy, morality and religion and sets them against a futuristic sci fi backdrop among the stars. Just the best.

ORIGINALLY POSTED AT Fantasy Literature.

It’s been 3000 years since Ender Wiggin, as a child, was tricked into committing xenocide. While he and his sister Valentine traveled the universe and benefited from the effects of space-time relativity, Ender’s name has been reviled on Earth and all the inhabited planets. He is infamous for his childhood deeds, but almost everyone thinks he’s been dead for centuries. They don’t realize that the man who holds the respected position of Speaker for the Dead is actually Ender Wiggin. And they don’t know that the Hive Queen of the Buggers still lives and that Ender has vowed to find her a new home. When Ender is called to the planet Lusitania to speak the death of a beloved xenologer, he thinks he may have finally found a suitable place for the Hive Queen to resurrect her race.

In the author’s afterward to Speaker for the Dead, Orson Scott Card explains that this was the novel he had always intended to write and that Ender’s Game, its more famous and popular prequel, was just an introduction. I’m sure that’s why, as much as I loved Ender’s Game as a thrilling action-packed YA adventure, I liked Speaker for the Dead even more. This is a more mature, thoughtful, and far-reaching story.

Card explains that he wanted to explore this question: “What do we do about dead people whose lives were really crummy? What do we do about people who were vicious... What do you say at the funeral?” He suggests that we deal with this by lying, or by erasing the person they really were, re-making them, after their death, into the person we wish they had been. To address this human tendency, Card created the function of Speaker for the Dead — an objective outsider who would learn about the person who had died and would then speak the truth about him. This would involve uncovering not only the person’s good and bad deeds, but also the background that would let his acquaintances understand why he became the person he was. Card effectively uses the role of Speaker for the Dead to show us that there may be a very good reason why a “bad” person turns out that way. Not that this excuses his behavior, but it at least makes it understandable and may help us see how our own behaviors could have contributed to it. Perhaps then we can be more forgiving.

There is way more going on in Speaker for the Dead than this, though. Card explores the sciences of cultural anthropology and genetics as researchers on Lusitania are learning about the native alien species that live there. In so doing, he manages to touch on ecology, biodiversity, virology, xenophobia, cultural elitism, our motivations for scientific study of other species, and how advancing technologies drastically change a culture. He asks us to consider when we should disobey our government and when we should abandon the ethical principles we’ve sworn to uphold. He asks us to constantly question all of our previous knowledge.

Though this is a meaty and thought-provoking work, Speaker for the Dead is populated with characters you can love, hate, or otherwise relate to, and Card holds it all together with a heart-wrenching story about loneliness, bullying, abuse, hate, jealousy, adultery, incest, companionship, guilt, forgiveness, redemption, love, and death. There’s a lot going on here.

At the conclusion of Speaker for the Dead Ender finds that, once again, he has both destroyed and saved lives, and he is severely misunderstood by most of his fellow humans. He has accomplished much in Speaker for the Dead, but there is more trouble literally on the horizon. I can’t wait to see how he deals with it in the third ENDER WIGGIN novel, Xenocide.

Speaker for the Dead was published in 1986 and, like its prequel Ender’s Game, it won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards, making Orson Scott Card the first author to win both awards two years in a row. It also won the Locus Award. I listened to Audio Renaissance’s full-cast audio production of Speaker for the Dead. It’s excellent and highly recommended.

When I first read this book I was in middle school and I hated it. It was such a disappointment as a follow up to the brilliance of Ender's Game. I re-read it when in grad school, and it was an entirely different experience.

The book has elements of mystery, religion/mysticism, anthropology (albeit fictional anthropology), philosophy, politics, and intrigue. But its got a very slow start, and there isn't much in the way of action - its all about two cultures trying to understand each other. Its not a traditional sci-fi read, but for the right reader, it can be a really deep and meaningful experience.

That was one hell ova read. Everything one geek would ask from a sci fi book was here.

It was interesting to see what we call today Internet is called Ansible by Orson Scott in a book written in 1986. Actually it was coined by Le Guin in 1966 but yeah still amazing :)

Speaker for the Dead (Ender's Saga #2), Orson Scott Card

A 1986 science fiction novel by American writer Orson Scott Card, an indirect sequel to the novel Ender's Game. The book takes place around the year 5270, some 3,000 years after the events in Ender's Game.

Some years after the xenocide of the Formic species (in Ender's Game), Ender Wiggin writes a book called The Hive Queen, describing the life of the Formics as described to him by the dormant Formic Queen whom he secretly carries.

As humanity uses light-speed travel to establish new colonies, Ender and his sister Valentine age slowly through relativistic travel.

Ender's older brother, the now-aged Hegemon Peter Wiggin, recognizes Ender's writings in The Hive Queen, and requests Ender write for him once he dies. Ender agrees and authors The Hegemon.

These two books, written under the pseudonym "Speaker for the Dead", launch a new religious movement of Speakers, who have authority to investigate and eulogize a person and their work after their death.

تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز چهاردهم ماه ژانویه سال 2015 میلادی

عنوان: سخنگوی مردگان؛ نویسنده: اورسون‌ اسکات کارد؛

در کتاب نخست این سری، پس از دوبار حمله‌ ی بیگانگان به کره‌ ی زمین، که نژاد بشر را تا آستانه‌ ی انقراض پیش می‌برد؛ حکومت جهانی برای تضمین پیروزی نوع بشر در جنگ بعدی، و حفظ یکپارچگی سیاره، دست به گزینش و پرورش نوابغ نظامی می‌زند، و سپس آن‌ها را در نبردهایی شبیه‌ سازی شده آموزش می‌دهد، تا هنر جنگ را در ذهن‌های نوپا، و تشنه‌ ی داناییشان نهادینه کند؛ پس طبیعی است که نخستین آموزش‌ها جنبه‌ ی «بازی» داشته باشند...؛ رمانهای «بازی اندر (1985میلادی)»، و «سخنگوی مردگان (1986میلادی)»، هر دو برنده ی جوایز «هوگو» و «نبولا» شده اند، و اورسون‌ اسکات کارد را تنها نویسنده ی برنده ی دو جایزه برتر آمریکایی در سالهای متوالی کرده اند. در «بسخنگوی مردگان» سالها بعد، یک نژاد بیگانه دوم کشف میشود، و دوباره، انسانها میمیرند، و ...؛ «بازی اندر» در کتاب‌های «سخنگوی مردگان»، «بیگانه‌ کش»، «فرزندان ذهن» و «اندر در تبعید» ادامه می‌یابد و داستان‌های «اندر» در سیارات و کهکشان‌های گوناگون را روایت می‌کند. علاوه بر این کتاب‌ها، داستان کوتاه «جنگ هدیه‌ ها» و رمان «سایه‌ ی اندر» نیز در این مجموعه قرار دارند که در همان بازه‌ ی زمانی کتاب اتفاق می‌افتند؛ لازم به ذکر است که کتاب «سایه‌ ی اندر» کتابی بسیار پرطرفدار اس،ت که از زبان یکی از شخصیت‌های دوست‌ داشتنی به نام «بین» روایت می‌شود

تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 19/04/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی