Speaker for the Dead : Author's Definitive Edition

Rating:
Summary: A good sequel to Ender's game
Review: Speaker for the Dead is a good sequel. Ender's game was powerful because of the stunning plot twist ending. This book is more subtle. There's more character development, more subtlety in the plot.

Rating:
Summary: Devastatingly Good
Review: Speaker for the Dead is one of those very, very special books. The science behind it (particularly the virology and genetics) is intriguing and original, and it stands comfortably on it's own, toe to toe with works like Darwin's Radio. But that's just the mechanics.

The real strength of this story lies in Card's ability to wrangle story line and generate tension not only from character interaction, but particularly from internal tension and moral dilemma. The refreshingly honest take Card has on how to treat the dead and contend with the living, and how to own up to all the choices or the lack thereof - that make up a life, is breathtaking in its power.

When you're done with this, go out and get the 1st and 3rd books, Ender's Game and Xenocide. Run, don't walk. It's rare to get intelligent and entertaining Sci-Fi that stands up so well in a series.

Rating:
Summary: Really lame.
Review: This story was most definately well written... But if you really enjoyed Ender's Game, you're far better off reading the "Ender's Shadow" spinoffs. Those were *awesome*. This book was enough to turn me off from all of the rest.

Rating:
Summary: A more mature story
Review: While I'll admit that my first reaction to reading this book was to be less than excited, I have come around as I look at the context in which each story is told. "Ender's Game" is an intense, action-filled story, one easy to get hooked on. "Speaker for the Dead" takes the intellectuallism present under the action of "Ender's Game" and brings it to the spotlight. This is an intelligent book, and equal to it's predecessor in my opinion, but focussed on a different set of ideas.

In this novel, Card focusses on a more introspective struggle, something that is indicative of a more mature subject and more intellectual reading experience. In short, this isn't for those that loved "Ender's Game" because of the battle room or the fighting. This is a psychological and sociological story, not for the action sci-fi buff that "Ender's Game" was better able to cater to.

Rating:
Summary: Book Review on Speaker for the Dead
Review: The news reached Ender instantly: the "piggies" were murderers. The new sentient species on the planet Lusitania were just as the formics "buggers" were three thousand years ago. They were unknown in practices. Why did they kill the scientists that had grown so close to them? Speaker for the Dead, by Orson Scott Card, is intense, with the murder mystery thing going on, but on another plane, very sentimental.
The story revolves around the subplot of the Ribeira family and their hurt that Ender heals with his speaking. Ender is a speaker for the dead, but also the Speaker for the Dead: the one who wrote about the buggers and made people love and understand them after the initial fear had passed away with time. This was what he did with his speaking of people as well. Ender planned to write something similar about the piggies, but also to redeem himself. He had also been the one to almost commit Xenocide: He killed all of the buggers except one cocoon, which he kept to place on a world some day. Through it all, Ender also somewhat redeems his parents, in that he became the father he wanted. The Ribeira family became his own, as crazy as it seemed to the townsfolk. The Ribeiras were distant, cold, yet hurting, as mentioned before. Ender changed the lives of Novinha and her six children forever.
This book was also great on another level: Card's writing style is plain, yet powerful as truth. Card knows truth (about humans at least) and as a result, this entire story seems very real. It is something one can get really immersed in. I believe that, above all, Card wanted a story that did just that: a book that is real, and fun to the reader. I think that Card wrote the story he wanted. It was what I wanted, anyway.


Rating:
Summary: solipsistic space opera
Review: Many of the reviewers who disliked this book feel it compares poorly with "Ender's Game," which they liked; I'm in the camp of people who dislikes everything of Card's they've read, and who are irritated by his popularity. All of the characters engage in endless attempts at intellectual oneupsmanship, when they aren't tearfully confessing horrible secrets from the long-buried past. Sometimes they even do both at the same time!

Especially irksome is whiny Ender. Despite being constantly mired in self-pity, somehow Ender comes to a strange town, and within a few months, uncovers all the festering, decades-old secrets (adultery! unintentional incest! Princess Diana's albino love-child!) the townsfolk are hiding from each other and starts them on the path to healing, unravels the mysteries of yet another alien race, revives the aliens he destroyed millennia ago, prevents the destruction of a planet, and gets the babe (though to be fair, she doesn't seem much of a prize). This makes Ender unique among the world's messianic figures: he's saved the world twice, while the others have only done it once (I gather he does it at least twice more, but I haven't read the other Ender books, so I can't be sure).

There are other obnoxious features: the idea, which Card adores, of the Speakers for the Dead. These are people who go around digging up the secrets of the dead, and who hold public ceremonies where they reveal the private, hidden lives of these people, holding nothing back. This Card calls a "humanistic religion." Leaving aside what an oxymoron that phrase is, let's now imagine that you're dead and in the afterlife, watching your loved ones go about their lives. Would you really want somebody prying into the most personal recesses of your life? all those eccentricities, failures, and dark desires you spent so much time and effort trying to correct and turn to better ends? And would your family enjoy having the public know that, in addition to being the loving parent, good spouse, and decent citizen that in fact you were, you also stole money from the mob and had an illegitimate child when you were young and desperate? Card seems to think so. Since he believes this is such a great idea, I expect he'll have someone Speak for him at his funeral. (I don't however, expect that it will be an honest account of his life).

Card has a webpage. One glance at it makes it clear why he's obsessed with his supergenius characters. The page provides, among other things, a weekly dose of Card's opinions on movies, books, media, and minutiae such as restaurants in his hometown. Another item is a rather strident column on global politics (shades of Locke and Demosthenes). Both reveal Card's secret: he secretly believes he is one of the supergeniuses he writes about. He thinks there's no better judge and jury than he. He burns to be executioner too, but deep down he knows that he doesn't have the guts to be. So he settles for writing about the executioner (i.e., Ender). But he grows dissatisfied: being merely a god of sci-fi is not enough. His longings to shape the real world resurface. But he can only do this through the written word. Hence, a compromise solution: his opinion pieces and political essays.

This digression is quite pertinent to the book. For Card's conviction that his judgment and insight is far beyond that of other men comes through every page of his work. He doesn't trust the audience enough to grasp the emotions and the motives of his characters; he spells it all out (the scene where Ender blabs all the village's secrets in the middle of the church is a particularly ugly example of this). This, of course, proves to the reader that he's so smart that he understands the two-dimensional cartoon characters he's constructed in his own mind.

He has contempt for all his characters besides Ender: they serve merely as clueless plebes enlightened by Ender, enigmatic ciphers whose mysteries are exposed and explained by Ender, vehement opponents of Ender who grudgingly come to admire, and finally to worship him. Thus the novel serves as the room of mirrors which reveals unto Card the divine perfection of Ender, who is secretly Card as he sees himself.

In short: don't bother reading this book. Nor should you bother reading any more of the author's work (in fairness, I have not read any of his non-Ender stuff, so am not qualified to review it).