Reviews with content warning for Incest - Speaker for the Dead

This was an amazing book and a great follow up to Ender’s Game. I loved it and laughed at quite a bit of the dialogue; overall I had a great time reading

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nrogers_1030's review

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adventurous challenging emotional inspiring mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.25

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nytephoenyx's review against another edition

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reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.0

To enjoy Speaker for the Dead, you have to have an interest in species and social evolution. This book is somewhat fascinating in its study of the piggie race. That's about the best thing I can say about Speaker for the Dead - it's intellectually fascinating.

Speaker of the Dead, even more than Ender's Game, makes it abundantly clear exactly how highly Orson Scott Card thinks of himself. The slow-paced erudite reflections are haughty. In addition, there are too many things within the story that are far too convenient. The characters comment on this - "Surely this cannot be the SAME Speaker who spoke the Hive Queen and the Hegemon?" and so forth. There's a sense of over-importance to Ender's character that he has survived three-thousand years to create in a few days what generations of other humans were unable to accomplish.

I'm also a little perplexed about his take on women? On one had, he has female scientists and a female leader to the alien societies. However, all these women are easily overruled by their emotions and especially by the presence of Ender himself. Novinha, in particular, was a disappointment. Valentine, too, choses love over her intellectual pursuits. Maybe I'm reading into it too much, but at times it feels like Card is building a commentary to say that women are unable to be true intellectuals because of their inability to resist emotional drives?

I dunno. On an intellectual level I liked this, even though it was really slow-paced. On an emotional level (oh the irony) I found the pretentiousness to be a bit much. I also can't see this story going anywhere exciting, so I'm done with the Ender Saga. Doubly so since Orson Scott Card is openly and aggressively homophobic and I deeply disagree with his personal views.

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olliereads's review

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reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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runitsthepopo's review

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adventurous challenging emotional hopeful inspiring mysterious reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.75

This book was so beautiful. I picked it up because I loved Ender's Game, I stayed for the mystery of the piggies, but I cried for the beautiful relationship between the piggies and the humans.

Speaker for the Dead: 4.75/5 stars

My few criticisms are that it took a long while for things to pick up, and I still don't understand why Miro was given the story that he was, unless there's a sequel involving him that I'm not aware of. At the end, it seemed everyone was given a happy ending aside from him.

"They're afraid of the same thing you fear, when you look up and see the stars fill up with humans They're afraid that someday they'll come to a world and find that you have got there first."

"We don't want to be there first," said Human. We want to be there too."

And that's when I stared at the page for a good half-minute, struck by how much I was feeling. It didn't stop there. I continued tearing up when the piggies learned that Libo and Pipo were in pain as they died, when they cried out in grief because they realized that their honored friends had spent their last moments in fear, when Ender is told that he'll have to kill again, that he'll have to kill Human, when Human embraces the gift Ender gives him, consoling Ender with the fact that he'll be living his third life, the life of light. When Ender admits to himself that Human will still be dead to him, no matter the facts.

The piggies are so undoubtedly alien. The mystery of their culture and biology was the biggest driving force for my reading the early parts of the book. But during their first meeting with Ender, they come alive. They are still alien, but so painfully human too.

And that's the point, I suppose. The narrative keeps coming at you with the Hierarchy of Foreignness, with the question of "Are the piggies ramen or varelse?" You continue to ask yourself, at what point do the piggies become sentient, mature creatures? But in one chapter, you realize that it was never a question of how advanced their society was, but a question of "At what point will humans see themselves in the piggies?"

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bencaroline's review

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dark mysterious reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

This book's author is a bigot. The book is extremely influential in the sci-fi genre, for good reason, but it MUST be discussed within the context of a hateful author.

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