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.

I decided to go back and reread  Ender’s Game and this book before finally reading the rest of the series. I did not know that Mr. Card had originally written Ender’s Game as a short story, and that he only blew it out to a full-length novel when he realized he needed to create too much backstory to include within Speaker for the Dead. So, with that understanding, it’s no surprise that this novel not only builds nicely on the ending of Ender’s Game, but in many ways is the richer, fuller story. The tensions and mysteries between the Piggies and the humans, and between the scientists and the civil/religious authorities, keep the plot moving nicely. And Ender Wiggin remains a sophisticated, engaging character.

Speaker for the Dead is a more adult book than Ender's Game, really expanding on the philosophical focus of the original:

A strange thing happened then. The Speaker agreed with her that she had made a mistake that night, and she knew when he said the words that it was true, that his judgment was correct. And yet she felt strangely healed, as if simply saying her mistake were enough to purge some of the pain of it. For the first time, then, she caught a glimpse of what the power of speaking might be. It wasn’t a matter of confession, penance, and absolution, like the priests offered. It was something else entirely. Telling the story of who she was, and then realizing that she was no longer the same person. That she had made a mistake, and the mistake had changed her, and now she would not make the mistake again because she had become someone else, someone less afraid, someone more compassionate.

Highly recommended, though if you’re like my kids, and what you really liked about Ender’s Game was the whole concept of Battle School, you may have trouble getting into this story.

2.5 Tedious Stars increased to 3 Stars in anticipation of the 16 subsequent installments being better.
This is the second of the 18-book Enderverse series, and it's no Ender’s Gamen  n, which for me was a 5 star read, both times I read it! If you like you can read that review here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

I enjoyed the moral/philosophical, and free floating tropes that gave Speaker For The Dead a complexity not found in the first installment. However. it really became a bit repetitive and tedious around the last fifth, about 100 pages too long. The conclusion was surprisingly satisfactory.

I Spy Reading Challenge prompt "in the hospital" with 'Dead' in the title, how ironically mordant.
Next: Xenocide (Enderverse #3)

A poetic story of compassion, empathy, truth, redemption, and cohabitation. Still one of my all-time favorites. Xenocide is next.

Card is wrong when he tells his readers that Speaker is a better book than Ender's Game. He says young readers don't like it as well because it doesn't feature kids. I don't like it as well as Ender's game because while Ender's game is a psychological epic, with all the heartfelt intensity of a writer's first real story, Speaker reads to me like just another science fiction novel. Some aliens, a superintelligent virus; snooooozer. Well depicted snoozer, but still. Ender spends his whole life in isolation, and comes out of it a wimp, not a hero. Makes me wish Mazer Rackham had kicked his ass a little harder in the first book.

A few different times while reading The Speaker for the Dead, I wondered if it was one of the best books I’ve ever read. It must be one of those serendipitous readings, where the right book came to me at the right time. This book blows Enders Game out of the water.

It’s difficult to pinpoint which part of this book gripped me so intensely; made me cry at 2am on my apartment futon. I think it was the very real understanding of what true, transformative love looks like. “I think you’re compassionate enough to put the hot iron on the open wound.” It spoke difficult truth into painful areas for healing; it didn’t tie everyone’s story up with a pretty bow at the end. Instead, it left space for these characters to breathe into, once the illusions were shattered.

This book touched on the power families have both to destroy and to heal, and the responsibility of community. It did all of the obvious things you would expect from Orson Scott Card – highlighting humanity’s fear of the other, the alien, but he showed that that fear isn’t always directed at the alien.

Above all of the scientific and philosophical discussions surrounding the piggies (which I loved), Card wrote people and piggies for whom you truly cared. I felt like I lost a dear group of friends, a family, when I finished this book yesterday.

Speaker for the Dead: Way too much talk about morality, guilt, and redemption through the truth, at the expense of plot and narrative

Ender’s Game and Speaker for the Dead really opened my mind to the wonders of the SF genre back in junior high. Ender’s Game was a gripping coming-of-age military SF adventure about child genius Ender Wiggin, which raised serious questions about training children for military combat, and whether genocide can ever be justified, even in self-defense of humanity.

Synopsis

Speaker for the Dead revolves around a dysfunctional family of xenobiologists and xenologers, and features an adult Ender Wiggin (now know as Andrew Wiggin, Speaker for the Dead) who is only in his mid-30s thanks to the time relativity effects of interstellar flight. On Lusitania, a new alien species has been discovered, the pequeninos (or piggies, as they are commonly known), the only other alien race to be encountered since the buggers were exterminated by Ender Wiggin, the Xenocide. So now the Hundred Worlds and Starways Congress are much more cautious about alien contact, and restrict all contact with the piggies to just the handful of xenobiologists and xenologers.

The story involves the emotional trials of the Ribeira family, which has been struck with a series of tragedies tied to interactions with the piggies, as well as contact with a deadly plague called the Descolada which scrambles DNA in unexpected and fatal ways. Despite her parents finding a way to prevent the Descolada from harming humans, the main character Novinha loses her parents to the plague. Although she takes on their mission to study the biology of the piggies, along with a father/son pair of xenologers (Pipo and Libo), tragedy strikes both of them fatally as they are killed by the piggies after discovering information related to the Descolada. Novinha, who considers Pipo a father figure and Libo as her lover, is emotionally devastated and retreats further from the community of Lusitania. She later decides to marry Marcao Ribeira, who turns out to be an abusive drunk, and although they have six children together, their family life is toxic and everyone’s emotional lives are a mess. It is the death of Marcao, along with the earlier deaths of Pipo and Libo, that triggers the main events of the story.

Andrew Wiggin answers a call for a Speaker for the Dead sent initially by Novinha (to speak the death of Pipo), but later requests are also made by her eldest son Miro (to speak the death of Libo) and her eldest daughter Ela (to speak the death of Marcao) after Andrew has already begun his journey. When he arrives, it becomes clear that Novinha regrets her request (which cannot be cancelled), and that the family is in disarray due to the abuse of Novinha by her husband Ribeiro, and her refusal to reveal what information about the Descolada lead to the deaths of Pipo and Libo.

It takes only a week of sleuthing and infiltration of the family by the incredibly perceptive Speaker for the Dead to unearth layer after layer of secrets and emotional pain buried in the Ribeiro family, and despite the resistance of various family members, he finally undertakes to reveal the true story behind Pipo, Libo, Novinha, and Marcao, and this cathartic Speaking before the Lusitania community provides one of the key moments of the book. There is also a subplot about Starways Congress finding out about illegal contact with the piggies and attempting to shut down the colony (which it views as being in rebellion) and its ansible communications network, along with an artificial intelligence named Jane that has formed a connection with Ender Wiggin over the 3,000 years since the genocide. However, I found this subplot quite underdeveloped and not really critical to the plot. Most likely it was added to lay the groundwork for the following two sequels, Xenocide and Children of the Mind, which are widely regarded as inferior to the first two books. Finally, the Hive Queen also features as part of the redemption of Andrew Wiggin, as he seeks to find a new home for her race to atone for his unwitting act of Xenocide 3,000 years earlier.

Conclusion

Apparently Orson Scott Card had always wanted to write Speaker for the Dead, and wrote Ender’s Game partly to set the stage for this story. Unfortunately, it is very clear that the book is mainly an opportunity for him to espouse his various views about morality, guilt, lies, and redemption via revealing of the truth, no matter how painful.

I don’t have any problems with OSC’s ideas about redemption via truth, that lies can only destroy family relationships, and that guilt must eventually be let go if people are to ever move on with their lives. However, I would say a good 75% of the 415 pages of Speaker for the Dead are weighed down with endless, well-meaning descriptions of the pain and suffering of the characters, and it got to be extremely annoying after a while. I think if OSC had simply allowed the story to speak for itself, he wouldn't have to spell out exactly how emotional and cathartic the Speaking was. I also didn't like the fact that the Speaker seemed so all-knowing and infallible for much of the book. Finally, I thought it was such a waste that just 25% of the story was devoted to the fascinating alien biology and alien thought-processes of the piggies. The book would have been better served by a 50/50 breakdown, or even the reverse.

This is where Ender’s Game succeeded and Speaker for the Dead failed, because the former story was driven by the action of the plot with occasional thoughts on the moral implications of the story, whereas Speaker for the Dead is almost entirely a discussion of those ideas, with the storyline taking a backseat (and several storylines are barely explored at all, so why bother?). So the irony is that while OSC is probably much more enamored of Speaker for the Dead, I think Ender’s Game has had a greater impact on readers, especially younger ones. And while I can’t say I didn’t like Speaker for the Dead, I really wish it could be rewritten with less exposition and more plot-driven narrative. It would be a much better book.

O Govorniku za mrtve, by Orson S. Card
Nakon "Enderove igre", nisam očekivao ovakvu promjenu settinga ni teme, izvrstan preokret u polje antropološkog SF-a, prvog kontakta te razvoj priče s religijskog aspekta. Priča se nastavlja u dalekoj budućnosti, nakon postksenocidne kolonizacije svemira i kreiranja Sabora Stotinu svjetova, gdje se Ender i dalje pokušava iskupiti za svoj čin; što i radi u obliku Govornika za mrtve. Ender više nije marioneta vojne vlasti, on je sad svemirski vagabund u potrazi za mjestom gdje će u činu iskupljenja položiti čahuru matice, i skrasiti se poput njegove sestre Valentine. Tako će ga put navesti na planet Luzitaniju, kršćansku koloniju, gdje u ekstremnoj izoliranosti leži rezervat rase Praščića. Istovremeno obnašajući svoju ulogu Govornika za obitelj Ribeiru, Ender istražuje civilizaciju ovih zagonetnih tuđinaca, a čije će razotkrivanje imati dalekosežne posljedice za taj planet. Ili možda neće? Fino je prikazana disfunkcionalna obitelj Ribeira, čiju vivisekciju detaljno odrađuje naš Govornik. Iako su likovi izvrsno postavljeni u svoje uloge, ispočetka lik mlade ksenologinje Novinhe naizgled kao da ima jeftinu karakterizaciju; no na temelju ovog lika Card izgrađuje genezu pravog školskog primjera nasilja u obitelji i njegovih posljedica. Povijest se zapravo ponavlja (na više mjesta u različitim vremenskim razdobljima), ovo je zapravo druga šansa onih primarnih kršćanskih kolonista Amerike, Scott kao da ih ovime pokušava iskupiti. Nisu znali što čine, uništili su domorodačku civilizaciju; samo što su u Brazilu Indiosi imali svoje zaštitnike, jezuite. Kolonija na Luzitaniji je kršćanska i složena je baš prema Cardovom ukusu, budući da je pripadnik Crkve, no njegov stav prema uobičajenim kršćanskim kanonima je umjereno liberalan. Iznimno pitko i zanimljivo štivo, mislim da sam ga roknuo u tri dana, jednostavno se stranice nisu prestale okretati. Za nastavke kronološki nastavljene na ovaj, očekivao bih da se bave nečim drugim, no vidim da su i jedan i drugi nastavak priče iz ove knjige…

Ulomak iz romana...
"Prvi puta nakon Ksenocida kukaca, što ga je obavio zloglasni Ender, ljudi su našli u svemiru strani inteligentni život. Praščići su bili tehnološki primitivni, no koristili su oruđa, gradili kuće i govorili. "Bog nam je dao novu priliku," izjavio je papa Pio s planeta Baia. "Možemo otkupiti svoj grijeh uništenja kukaca!"

One of my favorite books in a long time! Ender’s Game was an enjoyable sci-fi read, but Speaker for the Dead was a much more interesting book with complex characters and relationships. Yes, it’s still sci-fi, but it’s about so much more: family, love, guilt, empathy, forgiveness, responsibility, religious freedom, politics, understanding other cultures. I read some reviews that criticized the book for being allegorical, but this is one of the main reasons why I liked it. Highly recommend!

second read - 26 May 2007 - ***** I read Ender’s Game and this book and when they were new, about 20 years ago - but never went further in the series. However, Xenocide bubbled up to the top of my to-be-read list recently, and I went one chapter into it, before deciding to check out a plot synopsis of this predecessor book. I didn't remember it very well, so I then decided to re-read Speaker for the Dead. Lucky choice! This book is excellent!

It is set 3000 years after the events of Ender's Game, and Ender Wiggin is now known as Andrew Wiggin, a Speaker for the Dead, part of a secular religious movement whose main function seems to be find and reveal the truths about the lives of people who have died, upon request. No one realizes he is THE original Speaker for the Dead. He is called to the planet Lusitania, settled by Brazilian Catholics (Card spent two years in Brazil as an LDS missionary), to investigate the death of a Xenologer who has been mysteriously and ritualistically killed by the alien Pequeninos (aka Piggies). It is a case of misunderstood aliens, but also of an emotionally tortured human family that he becomes involved with. So the book has strong human drama, a first contact mystery, and speaks to the power of truth-telling.

Why didn't I like this book 20 years ago? It could be that I've changed. Or it could be that I am now seeing this book in its own right, rather that as a sequel to Ender's Game. But now I'm really looking forward to the successor books Xenocide and Children of the Mind.

first read - 3 May 1987 - *** I read Ender's Game and this book and when they were new - but never went further in the series.

Three thousand years have passed since the previus book, Ender's Game. Ender and his sister Valentine have been skipping from planet to planet and therefore time has moved differently for them.

In those 3,000 years Ender has become the Speaker for the Dead, the one who told the true story of the Bugger War. People now call it xenocide because they now understand that the Buggers didn't mean them any harm.

A second intelligent race has been discovered and some unexpected deaths have occurred. A Speaker has been requested and Ender has agreed to go to Lusitania, even though it takes 22 years to get there. Valentine has married and started a family and thus remains on Trondheim.

This is a story of families, anthropologists and religious crises. But a Speaker only speaks the truth no matter who doesn't want to hear it.

Ender has decided to stay on Lusitania because he fell in love with Novinha when she was 13 and requested his services. He could relate to her pain and anguish. Once he arrives on planet he also begins to love her 6 children, all of whom need assistance following the death of their father.

Once again Orson Scott Card has written a masterpiece.

I can understand why this book might not enthrall all of its readers but for me, it was brilliant. The anthropological framework certainly entertained me and the deeper themes hooked me.
The concept of a Speaker for the Dead and the healing properties of truth make the book a self-searching read. Perhaps the book does not glorify the catholic concept of confession, but it certainly values repentance and forgiveness while acknowledging the absurdity of the act of forgiveness. Above all, it reminds readers of our common humanity and urges each to pursue peace through understanding.

"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...Once you understand what people really want, you can't hate them anymore. You can fear them, but you can't hate them, because you can always find the same desires in your own heart."

"...she felt strangely healed, as if simply speaking her mistake were enough to purge some of the pain of it. For the first time, then, she caught a glimpse of what the power of speaking might be. It wasn't a matter of confession, penance, and absolution, like the priests offered. It was something else entirely. Telling the story of who she was, and then realizing that she was no longer the same person. That she had made a mistake, and the mistake had changed her, and now she would not make the mistake again because she had become someone else, someone less afraid, someone more compassionate."

"Sickness and healing are in every heart. Death and deliverance are in every hand."

"How suddenly we find the flesh of God within us after all, when we thought that we were only made of dust."

I continue to be equally tempted and repulsed by Ender's Saga. The second installment is a wondrous work of an imagination that's nevertheless nailed down in colonial paternalism—the good-hearted, traumatized prodigy of Ender's Game is now the full-on spiritual savior of a space colony populated by the descendants of what were ostensibly Portuguese-speaking Brazilians—and his sui generis white skin is duly remarked upon as he ministers to them in his capacity as Speaker for the Dead, miraculously healing the community's relational wounds.

He's also the stabilizing patriarch of a family reared by a single mother—Ender "falls in love" with Novinha during a voyeuristic surveillance, and has already decided that he is going to insert himself into her life, and her children's lives, like an 'alpha male'. I practically heard "Every Breath You Take" playing over his starship's PA system.

Card's anthropological empathy towards a new alien species, the pequeninos, does not stop him from depicting them as diminutive and demotic, netting the nickname "piggies". But he also constructs a unique and compelling ecological mystery that finds him again reaching for a message that seems to paradoxically elude him where gay and non-white people are concerned: that empathy for the Other is the best thing we have going for us, and will expand the borders of our understanding of all creation.

I'm probably going to finish this series despite myself.