Customer Reviews: Read 14 more reviews...
 NOTHING like Ender's Game August 18, 2007
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
'Ender's Game', the first book in this series, is one of my favourite books, and I read 'Speaker for the Dead' on the basis of the author's remarks that he only wrote the novel version of the first book to set up the story for the second. I was warned that the story is very different, and that's totally true. If you're looking for 'more of the same' then look elsewhere.
However, this is a good book in its own right. If you're interested in the sort of sci-fi that involves in depth descriptions of alien species and their cultures, then this will be right up your street. There is also a solid story and some really clever ideas, but I did personally have trouble remembering which character was which at some points as several blur into one in my mind. The fact that Ender is one of the main characters brings an extra level of interest if you have read the first book, and although you probably could read this as a stand-alone story, I would definitely recommend reading 'Ender's Game' first.
In summmary, an award-winning, well written solid sci-fi story, but not really my cup of tea.
 This time more is better July 29, 2007
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Writing a sequal to as fine a book as Enders Game must be a nightmare, thankfully Scott Card has woken up in the middle of the night and turned to his wife with a happy but evil smile, and a good idea, rather than snapping awake in a cold sweat of fear as his publisher demands thier money back, or his kneecaps.
The device employed to propel the story 3000 years into the future is irrelevent, like may of the surface details in great literary SciFi the mechanics of the universe is of no matter. It is the ideas that raise this genre up out the mud. The wierd thing in this case is that the ideas have not changed from the first book in the series even as the place, time and nearly all the characters do. By staying the course with ideas of personal responsability, duty and most importantly where you can draw the line of being a person, as opposed to just a sack of meat that resembles a person, Scott Card achieves the near impossable double aim
of the sequel, more the same, but diffrent.
In "Enders Game" that focus was on the movment from childhood to adulthood, this time the line might be between people, and not as is more common between human and alien. The last time i read as fine a rendition of alieness was in Niven and Pournell's "Mote in Gods Eye", the difrence is that they sought to mark the seperation between species, here the story purposefully erodes any inter-species line and places some humans as being closer to real and truely strange aliens, rather than in the wider field of the human diaspora to the stars.
I heard a homily last week that seems approriate, it goes: that all men (and woman too so stop shouting at me) are born individuals, but that most die as copies. Ender is that rarest of humans an individual, despite all that happens to him he retains his humanity, he is an individual, as real a possable person as you or i. Great fictional characters seem like they could step out of the pages and sit dowm and share a drink or a laugh or a hurt with you. In this book Ender has fleshed out to be such a person, and the story and the series are raised to greatness by his success as a person.
i am going to wait a bit to read on in this series cos i have a stack of books to read, but i anticipate itr will crown one of the great acheivments in Sci Fi.
P.S. i recomend that you read this in one shot, take the phone off the hook, lock the kids/girlfrend/boyfrend/dog in another room, and immerse yourself. Great Sci Fi is best when you can give yourself fully to its wild filghts of imagination.
 An excellent sequel and fascinating story September 2, 2006
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
This was a fascinating, generational story of life on Lusitania, where humans have come into contact with the second sentient beings--the piggies--since the xenocide of the buggers in Ender's Game. Feeling guilty, the Starways Congress decides to allow xenologers to study these aliens and live among the Catholic colony on Lusitania. When two xenologers die at the hands of the piggies, the old calls for war ring again but instead of an armada, the Speaker of the Dead is summoned. Andrew Wiggin, Speaker of the Dead, sets off for Lusitania where he hopes to repair the lives of two of families on Lusitania and solve the mystery of the piggies.
This story is VERY different from Ender's Game, and yet it succeeds in many ways. The very idea of a Speaker for the Dead is incredibly moving and to have Ender, the slayer of the buggers, fill this role proves even more powerful. The dramatic effect he has on Lusitania is enough to declare the book a triumph. However, the culture of the piggies is at the heart of the story, and the gripping mystery of the xenologer's deaths, when resolved, will not disappoint. Card really doesn't need to continue this series; I can't image a more fitting ending.
Genius December 10, 2005
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
In this book the true genius of Orson Scott Card is revealed. 3000 years after Enders Game, Ender is still travelling the stars until he hears about the brutal murder of a scientist by 'pigies', a new intelligent lifeform, and a call for a speaker for the dead.
Orson Scott Card makes his characters so believable that you cannot help feeling for them and their pain. I found myself especially feeling for Ender, because when he first killed the 'buggers' everyone loved him for it, but when he became The Speaker for the Dead, and wrote his book about them, eveyone demonised him, and 3000 years later he can't even tell people that his name is Ender.
An absolutely excellent book, that in my view should be compulsory reading!
"When you walk on the face again, then I can be forgiven" June 13, 2005
17 out of 18 found this review helpful
After I finished with "Ender's Game" I read an interview with Orson Scott Card in which the author said that the only reason for expanding the first book in the series from a novella to a novel was to provide a more solid foundation to the real story he wanted to tell. Having loved the first book in the series I could not wait to get my hands on "Speaker for the Death" based on that "recommendation", and luckily I was not disappointed in the least.More than three-thousand years have passed since Ender annihilated the buggers without knowing what he was actually doing, and we find a world that shocks us in our core, since Ender is seen as a murderer of masses. On the other hand, most people venerate the Speaker for the Dead, unaware that this person is none other than that who they despise: Ender Wiggin. But even if for most people he is just an evil guy that lived three millenniums ago, we find him alive thanks to the intricacies of intergalactic travel. Ender is only thirty-eight years old and spends his time trying to find a world in which to provide the buggers with a new beginning; using the cocoon he has, which contains a new queen of the buggers. Those that read "Ender's Game" probably liked the fast pace of the book and the way in which the author engages the reader with the games and the battles. That book also contained ethical aspects that affected the story, but these were hinted at and not discussed too deeply. I was expecting something similar, but found that there was a surprise in store for me, with a book that is not fast-paced at all, but instead reads more like a reflection on philosophical and ethical issues. This does not sound as much fun, but let me tell you, the author surrounds these main topics with such fascinating events that the journey is a real treat. The final result was that I loved this book, and now even prefer it over the first installment. The story is set in Lusitania (in allusion to Portugal), a planet in which the human race cohabitates with the pequeninos (little ones in Portuguese). Here we find Pipo, a xenobiologist that is in charge of studying the behavior of the pequeninos, also called piggies, while interfering as little as possible. He is assisted in this task by his son Libo and an orphan called Novinha. When everything seems to be moving forward as planned and Libo and Novinha start to build a relationship that goes beyond friendship, Pipo ends up murdered by the piggies. Novinha knows that the reason behind this has to do with findings from the research she showed the man right before his demise, but does not know exactly what. As a she is disoriented and decides to summon a Speaker for the Dead to speak Pipo's death and bring closure to this incident. The speaker that is closest to the planet is none other than Ender, who now gets a new opportunity to interact with another alien race and who believes that the planet may be a good environment for bringing the buggers back to life. When he gets to Lusitania more than two decades later things have changed, and he finds a complex set of relationships and a web of lies that can destroy many people. Being able to handle this, plus the pequeninos, plus the buggers, seems a challenge that only Ender Wiggin can face. I would have to rate "Speaker for the Dead" as the best fantasy novel I have read so far, since not only it is extremely entertaining and develops in a cleverly and precisely created world, but also explores complex topics without losing an iota of the readers attention. In my mind this is clear indication of the outstanding quality of Orson Scott Card's writing and of his prodigious imagination. I am already looking forward to reading the third book in the series, even though I am aware that it is almost impossible that it matches this one in its quality. But I am willing to bet that it will be an extremely pleasant experience anyway.
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