Speaker for the Dead [Paperback]

Orson Scott Card (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: St Martins Pr (September 1, 1992)
• ASIN: B001JE273Y
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (488 customer reviews)

More About the Author

Orson Scott Card is the bestselling author best known for the classic Ender's Game, Ender's Shadow and other novels in the Ender universe. Most recently, he was awarded the 2008 Margaret A. Edwards Award for lifetime achievement in Young Adult literature, from the American Library Association. Card has written sixty-one books, assorted plays, comics, and essays and newspaper columns. His work has won multiple awards, including back-to-back wins of the Hugo and the Nebula Awards-the only author to have done so in consecutive years. His titles have also landed on 'best of' lists and been adopted by cities, universities and libraries for reading programs. The Ender novels have inspired a Marvel Comics series, a forthcoming video game from Chair Entertainment, and pre-production on a film version. A highly anticipated The Authorized Ender Companion, written by Jake Black, is also forthcoming.Card offers writing workshops from time to time and occasionally teaches writing and literature at universities.Orson Scott Card currently lives with his family in Greensboro, NC.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

123 of 126 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ender's Game? No. Impressive? Definitely., April 25, 2000

By 

Daniel Dean (Myrtle Beach, SC USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Speaker for the Dead (Ender, Book 2) (Mass Market Paperback)

I went through various stages of opinion while reading this book... First was, "Hey- why is this nothing like Ender's Game? Drats!" Then, "What is with all this Portuguese stuff, and religious garbage?" and "Why is Ender some kind of space-detective?" And so I began trudging through this book with a lack of enthusiasm. Then slowly but steadily, this story pulls you in. You don't mind the lack of Game's glorious action. This is a very mature piece.

I doubt that anyone will be able to read Ender's Game and stop there. You want more. Speaker for the Dead is where you have to go. I find it extremely hard to consider this a sequel, because never have I seen an author switch his style this drastically within one series. Card forces you to accept all of his changes, but those who adapt to this book are highly rewarded! I found myself involved with Card's characters quite alarmingly, and touched by his themes on so many levels.

One thing that really impressed me- Card takes our first intelligent contact with aliens and compares it with 16th century European explorers encountering the natives of South America. It shows the barriers of language, technology, religion, and misunderstandings -as well as mankind's need to control or dominate any new race it meets. This book is like a history lesson that teaches us not to make the same mistakes when we reach this point of our future. Very interesting.

There is no doubt I will be continuing this series.

166 of 180 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Orson Scott Card's best work, August 6, 1999

By 

J. Angus Macdonald "bibliovore" (Concord, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Speaker for the Dead (Ender, Book 2) (Mass Market Paperback)

As a habit, I avoid best sellers. When I heard there was a sequel to Ender's Game, I shuddered. That book had affected me so deeply, I could not imagine a sequel to it.

This book is in all ways, barring one, superior.

This book reminds me of Ursula LeGuin at her best, and I do not invoke her name lightly. She is one of the few sci-fi authors who understands something of anthropology and, more importantly, the human condition. Card in this one books has levelled with her.

Ender is a far richer and deeper character in this book than he was in Ender's Game. Here he is having to live with his own guilt and the positive and negative aspects of his own legend. He has inspired a cult of sorts, the Speakers of the Dead, people who speak not well of the dead, but realistically. How does one live with such a legacy?

The Piggies are intrinsicly fascinating. They are not small humans. They are not just randomly acting individuals. They act in a consistent, rational manner -- once you know all the peices of the puzzle. Most of these peices are not revealed except with time. Jane is also fascinating. "She" acts in a logical manner as well, but again it is not a HUMAN manner. The Hive Queen is very real and, again, not human. There is a delicate balance inherent in this book.

This book is far superior to Ender's Game, a book which is one of those rare sci-fi novels that I have read twice. It speaks to the core of humanity within us all, it speaks to our fears, our dreams, our hatreds, our prejudices, our nobility, our failings, and our longings. It is not a shoot-em-up. This book is literature, not science fiction. It may be read again with profit. It is not a book about plot and action (thank all the powers!). It is a book about being humnan.

I put a reservation in here, one way in which the book does NOT match Ender's Game. The ending of this book is abrupt and calls out for a sequel. This is quite sad. Ender's Game stands on its own; Speaker for the Dead calls out for a conclusion. Aside from that, this is a superlative book. No, not for everyone; name me a book that is for everyone. But in the end, an intelligent reader will gain much from reading Speaker for the Dead.

63 of 68 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A landmark of sci-fi and humanism, July 1, 2000

By 

William Krischke (Portland, OR United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Speaker for the Dead (Ender, Book 2) (Mass Market Paperback)

As he tells us in the introduction (which is, by the way, the best introduction I've ever read), this is the book Card intended to write when he began the ever-popular Ender series. Ender's Game was simply a prologue -- originally a short story.

There are so many good things about this book. Card has a talent for writing deep, real characters that I've never seen in sci-fi and seldom in any modern literature. He is a master storyteller, and this book is wonderfully paced -- you will continually be twisting your brain trying to uncover what is up with the pequeninos before the scientists do.

But most of all, this book is a eloquent manifesto of humanism. As Speaker for the Dead, it is our hero Ender's lifelong task to understand people and tell the truth about them -- a truth that will reveal their good, bad, and ugly, but most importantly, their inherent worth and um, goodness. This truth-seeking carries from the individual to the entire races, as Card (and Ender) examine how we relate to those we don't understand, even those we can't understand.

So what is it? It's a page-turner, crazy idea-filled(as all sci-fi should be) thrilling, thoughtful, powerful, funny, poignant novel. It is an excellent piece of writing that I would love to see taught in high school classrooms.

My only problems with it are that terrible cover(who designed these covers? They have nothing to do with the story -- not even the tone of the story) and the sometimes indecipherable use of portuguese. But those are both minor.

An excerpt:

"We know you now. That makes all the difference, doesn't it? Even Quim doesn't hate you now. When you really know somebody, you can't hate them." "Or maybe it's just that you can't really know them until you stop hating them." "Is that a circular paradox? Dom Cristao says that most truth can be only expressed in circular paradoxes." "I don't think it has anything to do with truth, Olhado. It's just cause and effect. We can never sort them out. Science refuses to admit any cause except first cause-- knock down one domino, the one next to it also falls. But when it comes to human beings, the only type of cause that matters is final cause, the purpose. What a person had in mind. Once you understand what people really want, you can't hate them anymore. You can fear them, but you can't hate them, because you can always find the same desires in your own heart."

If you'd like to discuss this novel, e-mail me at [e-mail]