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A review by taseenmuhtadi
Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card
3.0
The Speaker For The Dead picks up more than three millennia after the end of the Bugger war that ended with the complete extinction of the Buggers. That event is now called Xenocide and Ender Wiggin is now considered a monster. However, due to relativistic nature of time during interstellar travel, Ender and his sister Valentine is still alive and only in their 30s due to visiting dozens of planets. Ender is of course carrying around the egg of a Hive Queen, which will allow the buggers to reestablish their civilization. Ender has yet to find a suitable planet for the Hive Queen, even though he has already visited many. Humanity, meanwhile has found another intelligent alien species on another planet. This species is technologically primitive and the leadership of humanity has decided to limit contact between them and humans so as not to unduly affect their civilization.
This is the mix into which we follow Ender. He is ridden with guilt at what he has done with the buggers and he is determined to ensure that such a thing is not done with the new species. This is a very different character from the one we see in book 1. Growing up with the guilt of the Xenocide has had a profound effect on him. But he has developed well into the responsibility of finding a new home for the buggers. He could easily have fallen into depression and dysfunctionality; but he avoids that path. In fact, he finds another semi-alien character along the way in the form of an AI.
The character development of the book is fantastic. All the characters in the book are complex and adult, they feel real in a tangible way. Their sorrows and secrets, their dreams and anger; those were all very well written. The human relationships and family dynamics here superbly done. This is very down-to-earth, human story. The technology is there to aid in the storytelling, not the story itself. It’s very much reminiscent of Le Guin’s writing. Card even uses Le Guin’s ansible, possibly as a tribute. Card hinted in the preface that family would be a very major part of the story, and he does make it a profound part of Ender’s tale. And Card manages to do this in a reasonably limited word count, considering how well the inter-character relationships are explored. It’s not a quick read by any stretch though, it’s a meandering and introspective book. But it never drags on for too long.
The piggies, for all their familiar names and appearance truly seem alien. That is difficult to pull off, creating an alien culture that is actually “alien”, rather than some slight variation of human. Analyzing them from a human perspective results in some gruesome images; and we are reminded that this is an alien world with an alien way of life. Some of which we may never understand.
The book deals some heavy themes. Action-packed, suspenseful thriller this is not, even though there are murder mysteries here. Religion was a big part of the book but the religious allegory was lost on me. The plot was engaging and it came to satisfying, if too easily earned, ending. Some sections felt forced, designed to bring out certain pieces of monologue and thought; it didn’t feel organic. Card may have written Ender’s Game to facilitate this book, but I could see why the first book was more popular than the second.
This is the mix into which we follow Ender. He is ridden with guilt at what he has done with the buggers and he is determined to ensure that such a thing is not done with the new species. This is a very different character from the one we see in book 1. Growing up with the guilt of the Xenocide has had a profound effect on him. But he has developed well into the responsibility of finding a new home for the buggers. He could easily have fallen into depression and dysfunctionality; but he avoids that path. In fact, he finds another semi-alien character along the way in the form of an AI.
The character development of the book is fantastic. All the characters in the book are complex and adult, they feel real in a tangible way. Their sorrows and secrets, their dreams and anger; those were all very well written. The human relationships and family dynamics here superbly done. This is very down-to-earth, human story. The technology is there to aid in the storytelling, not the story itself. It’s very much reminiscent of Le Guin’s writing. Card even uses Le Guin’s ansible, possibly as a tribute. Card hinted in the preface that family would be a very major part of the story, and he does make it a profound part of Ender’s tale. And Card manages to do this in a reasonably limited word count, considering how well the inter-character relationships are explored. It’s not a quick read by any stretch though, it’s a meandering and introspective book. But it never drags on for too long.
The piggies, for all their familiar names and appearance truly seem alien. That is difficult to pull off, creating an alien culture that is actually “alien”, rather than some slight variation of human. Analyzing them from a human perspective results in some gruesome images; and we are reminded that this is an alien world with an alien way of life. Some of which we may never understand.
The book deals some heavy themes. Action-packed, suspenseful thriller this is not, even though there are murder mysteries here. Religion was a big part of the book but the religious allegory was lost on me. The plot was engaging and it came to satisfying, if too easily earned, ending. Some sections felt forced, designed to bring out certain pieces of monologue and thought; it didn’t feel organic. Card may have written Ender’s Game to facilitate this book, but I could see why the first book was more popular than the second.