Speaker for the Dead (Orson Scott Card)

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Speaker for the Dead
by Orson Scott Card

*****
Orson Scott Card did a brave thing with Speaker for the Dead, the sequel to Ender's Gane. He wrote a novel which almost rejects everything that make the original so popular. There is almost no action at all in this installment, no child-soldiers rebelling against a tyrannical social system, and any political reflections present are even more subtle than the first.

Arguably, it's also a better novel.

I say arguably, because at this level of prose, it becomes difficult to tell what ‘better' means, and it may all boil down to taste. Whereas Ender's Game was fast-paced and often chillingly brutal, Speaker for the Dead is warm, compassionate, and deeply moving. It is essentially a story about people, their relationships with one another and how they cope with each others' problems. If this makes Speaker sound like a soap opera, be comforted: it's neither shallow nor unrealistic.

Through the miracles of relativity, Ender Wiggin and his sister Valentine are still alive even though thousands of years have passed since the war that was the subject of Ender's Game. He is one of countless speakers for the dead, a group of people who, at funerals, tell the truth about the lives of the deceased (as opposed to saying what everyone wants to hear.) However, no one knows that Ender is the original speaker. He stumbles upon a planet called Lusitania, inhabited by Portuguese colonists and a mysterious alien race known as the pequenninos, or piggies. He is to speak the death of one the colony's most despised people, but in searching the truth he finds himself in the midst of a terrible mystery.

The plot I have described doesn't give away much, but one gets an idea that this is an entirely different story from the military-action-based Ender's Game. While that book dealt with Ender's crimes and his manipulation by the military, this one seems to be about his attempt at redemption by helping another family come to terms with death. This is also a story about fear and prejudice, love and hate, dreams and disappointments, pride and guilt—in short, a story about the human soul and all the inherent greatness and faults that reside within.

There is really nothing to criticize in this novel. If you read Ender's Game, read Speaker for the Dead. It's a different novel altogether. The pacing is leisurely, as the novel was not intended for excitement, but Card manages to deepen the meaning of suspense. The story, which opens like a raw wound, is essentially one long healing process, but the result is one of the most undeniably satisfying and heartfelt novels of all time.