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Summary: This is no Ender's Game
Review: Ender's Game is one of my favorite books, but Orson S. Card totally missed the target when he wrote this book and went way off course. Instead of trying to continue with the Characters, Orson tried to write and invent a new science and new vocabular. Interesting work, but where are the characters from Ender's Game!! Don't waste you time, just re-read Ender's Game again and let the story end there!!!!
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Summary: Speaker for the dead review
Review: This is only the 2nd book I read from the Ender series but I think I much prefer reading Ender's Game than having to read this again. The book lacks action and drama. Speaker is told with compassion and is a power sequel to Ender's Game but Like I said, I much rather read Ender's Game. IF you wanted to read Xenocide, you got to read this.:-(
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Summary: Best of the Ender series
Review: Though this is only the second novel I have read in the Ender series by Orson Scott Card, I think it is probably the best.While reading "Ender's Game" will clarify parts of this novel, it is not strictly necessary to understand it. This novel takes place three thousand years after the events of "Ender's Game" by which time humanity has colonized dozens of planets (confederated as the "Hundred Worlds") and there has been no contact with an alien species since Ender destroyed the buggers (an insect like alien race) thousands of years ago... Until Lustitania is discovered. A new colony is established on Lusitania to study a new race called, informally, the "piggies." The colonists begin to study the alien race but this time humanity is determined to do it right, to prevent another war. So, strict rules are set up for the alien anthropologists (xenologers) to follow. Everything goes reasonably well for several years until a discovery is made and the piggies kill one of the xenologers and plant a tree in him, later the same man's son is ritually killed in the same way. The major theme of the novel is how people deal with the "foreigner"; violence, wonder, awe? Science fiction is particularly well equipped, as a genre, to explore themes like this because it can use exaggerated or strange examples (i.e. aliens instead of Russians or some other Earth nationality). Other interesting things in the novel include the fact that the Roman Catholic Church still continues to exist and the Speaker of the Dead has become something of a humanistic religion that is about truly understanding a dead person and then speaking their death truthfully, no more and no less. The main character, Ender, presents an interesting personality; he is at once the man who destroyed an entire alien species and he is also the only person who have really understood them and made it possible for the rest of humanity to understood. Such a complicated, tragic figure is intriguing. Though I haven't read the rest of the Ender series (Xenocide, Children of the Mind, Ender's Shadow etc...), I think this will probably be the best one for the way in which it explored the age old idea; how do you deal with someone that appears to be different but who may in fact be similar to you? I plan to read, "Xenocide," and, "Children of the Mind," soon. Please see my review of, "Ender's Game."
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Summary: I say go for it
Review: This story is what was in Card's mind when he wrote Ender's Game. The premise of the book is that 3000 into the future, due to relativism of time travel, Ender Wiggin is faced to finally redeem is xenocide of the Formics. While in his thirty years of life he has become a humanist and a philosopher, he is still at heart untouched by plain real life.
The opportunity arises when in his trip he goes to a service a human colony in the planet Lusitania. A planet where the only other race of intelligent beings exist. The piggies, who are feared and kept untouched by humans, in order to keep them under control. Ender has to change the events so understanding become possible and in the near future , also the Buggers can come back to life in what is planned to be a parallel to paradise, where the most different intelligent beings can coexist peacefully. The story has a four stars for originality, and is above all a metaphor that has the moral of understanding and acceptance, open mindedness and love. It's really about breaking paradigms. In the other hand, we go along with Ender, who is given now the chance to help and finally have a family, to earn love and heal scars of people who also was abused and suffered just like him, to become a protector and a knight in shinning armor. He find relief to his conscience which was loaded all the time with a guilt that should have been other's. The universe created by the book is rich, the plots very well taken care of and varied. And to top it there is a tragic romantic interest for Ender which really appealed that part of me. Worth reading.
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Summary: A sequel that is actually better than the original
Review: In this volume; Ender Wiggin, and his sister Valentine are living on Lusitania and doing everything to keep the Descolada virus from mutating the human beings, and Ender can not awaken the "Bugger" hive queen (the only survivor of her race that Ender had destroyed in his childhood. Ender and the human inhabitants of Lusitania discover a form of space travel to travel billions of light years in mere seconds. It works by leaving the physical universe, and once outside the universel your thoughts create reality, meaning you can pop back into the universe anywhere you want to go. However; Ender is the only one that can go outside because he is the only one that can work with Jane (the artifical lifeform he created in Battle school. In the trip, one of the colonists has legs that do not work, and he wants to be healed, another colonist holds the pattern for recolada (that people and other lifeforms will not be subject to the devastating effects of Descolada; but allow the pequineos, and other lifeforms native to Lusitalia to have their afterlife as another species. In the case of Pequineos; after they died they bacame trees. the trip is successful, the colonist is healed, the Recolada retro virus is created, and Ender accidentaly creates young versions of his brother Peter, and Sister Valentine. Since they are creations of Ender Wiggin; the AI program Jane can communicate and work with them. This book has a lot of action and intrigue. I highly recommend it to you. Wah doh Ogedoda (We give thanks Great Spirit)
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Summary: The author of Ender's Game speaks up in a big way.
Review: A thrilling follow up to Ender's game. Once again, humanity meets an alien race and is forced to either understand the other or destroy it. Again, Ender Wiggin is thrust into the center of the conflict when, after a brutal murder, he is called upon in his role as speaker of the dead. I really enjoyed this book. I could not put it down after the first paragraph. Not only was the plot fascinating, but the characters were believable. Flawed enough to be human but hopeful enough to be inspiring they really suck you into the story lending a credability that is lacking in many other science fiction stories. However, there is more to this book then a great story. Like in Ender's game the author is exploring a facet of humanity through his work. In Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card explored the confusing and often contradictory world of children. In Speaker for the Dead he explores a question no less deep: "What is faith really?" Unlike many of his fellow science fiction authors, he does not dismiss Christianity out of hand, but rather shows how the Church might have to deal with other life in the universe. This book only confirmed the suspicion which began to form in my mind after reading Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card is a great writer. He can deal with heavy overarching issues without losing track of his story or characters. He made this book a great read, which I have no problem recomending to anyone.
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Summary: Even Better than Ender's Game
Review: It is difficult to conceive of this book as a sequel to Ender's Game, simply because the two books are so totally dissimilar in style. Ender's Game was a straight-forward linear yarn, whereas Speaker for the Dead is much more nuanced. In fact, the two books relate to each other in much the same way as Ender's Game's Ender Wiggin does to Speaker for the Dead's Andrew Wiggin. They are the same person, but Ender is a child and Andrew is an adult, just as Ender's Game is ultimately a children's book and Speaker for the Dead is a book for adults. The greatest teaching of this book is that the Prime Directive as represented by Star Trek, that being the principle of non-interference, is actually just a particularly insidious form of cultural supremacy. True, we don't artificially contaminate the culture, but in this case humanity refuses to allow the Piggies to grow, in fact forcing them to stagnate. The book also forces us to challenge all of our assumptions about acceptable cultural practices. This is particularly brought home when Ender chastises Ouanda and Ela for discussing methods of altering the Piggies' reproductive process to something that we would consider more humane. Ultimately, while Ender's Game may have been a better story in and of itself, this is by far the more significant work. As with Ender's Game, there is significant flaw in the book's logic, but it is essentially of a nitpicking nature and does not detract from the book's purpose. I can't describe it without introducing a spoiler, so I'll only say that there is an inherent but unbelievable assumption that the character who leaves Lusitania in the last chapter is the first person to ever do so.
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Summary: World class literature, not just science fiction.
Review: People who are turned off by science fiction will miss on a book whose greatness transcend the subject itself. The author is a wonderfull story teller.
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Summary: Humanistic Sci Fi
Review: Thought this book was more than great, very mind expanding.
The title Speaker for the Dead makes it sound like a horror story or something morbid, which is misleading. The lead character Ender was a child general who lead an intersteller army in the distruction of another species which he didn't know because he believed he was just doing battle simulations at the training academy. Afterward he calls himself the speaker for the dead - the dead being that lost species. When a new intelligent species, the "piggies" are discovered he finds the opportunity to redeem his past. The books moves along alittle slow at times, action wise(Ender's Game the prequil is more fast paced an action packed), but this book is deep.
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Summary: A Science Fiction Journey into Humanity
Review: This is an incredible book, and well worth your while. Speaker for the Dead picks up nearly 3000 years after the first novel in Orson Scott Card's series, Ender's Game. Ender Wiggin, also called The Xenocide and Speaker for the Dead, is summoned to the planet of Lucitania to Speak the death of several scientists. Through his quest to "Speak" the dead and discover their truths, he becomes tangled in several mysterious occurrences on the planet, concerning relations with other inhabitants. The questionable relations are with the Piggies, Lucitanian aboriginies that seem as alien as the Buggers of 3000 years ago. However, in an effort to make up for the Xenocide of the past, and in order to keep the Piggies from becoming too inteligent, humans have established very limited relations with them. Ender, in his quest to speak the dead, understand the Piggies, and deliver the Hive Queen to a new destination, takes us on an incredibly thought-provoking and gripping adventure. While the plot can be understood wtihout previous knowledge of Ender's Game, the underlying comments and questions about human nature are better appreciated if the reader has experienced Ender's Game first. Speaker for the Dead moves at a slower pace than Ender's Game (though much more quickly than the next books in the series, Xenocide and Children of the Mind), and spends more time developing characters and situations rather than advancing the plot. Like Ender's Game, this book appeals equally to Sci/Fi buffs and haters because of its omnipresent themes. This book affected me incredibly- Enjoy!
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