Speaker for the Dead

Honestly, if you can get past the overwhelming, religious archetypes in this book… you may be surprised by the delicately crafted undertones of sacrifice, love and truth.  In Orson Scott Card’s second book of the Ender’s Game series, he allows very little humor and ample reflection for the most serious situations.

Speaker for the Dead dives into the post-Xenocide mind of Andrew “Ender” Wiggen who has taken the title role.  Speakers, by definition, give unadulterated accounts of a person, race or entity and the true reason for their existence.  Ender hoped to atone for his previous actions and traveled from world to world telling the stories of people who otherwise weren’t truly known.

Eventually he found himself on a world called Lusitania, a Portuguese-speaking Catholic colony that preferred to keep to themselves isolated.  However, after the initial colonization, they found themselves invading another primitive, human-like species’ world.  The Pequeninos, more commonly called piggies, are the true focus of the book… more importantly the relationships they have with the humans, Ender and the future of mankind.  The colonists were allowed to stay and study the piggies to understand how they think.  The study of the piggies leads to countless complications that the human race was not ready to face alone.  Luckily, they had Ender.

Card tells an amazing story of rebellion, hope and understanding throughout the book, leaving no question unanswered and the reader wanting to love the characters.  The concepts within the book are far more than the casual reader will expect but they allow for deep thought about human nature and the morals we all hold dear.  It seemed as though he wasn’t just out to tell a story but to change our perceptions of life, as we know it.

I’d challenge any reader to finish the book… even if you get bored in the beginning.  The realizations you’ll make throughout the book make any of the dull portions worth reading.