Speaker for the Dead

An incredible book with loads of insight and an excellent understanding about human nature, the fog of war, and the unnecessary but inevitable conflict between different cultures with no real communication. It's my new favorite book!Reader's note; it gets off to a slow start, but the events that drive the story don't really begin in earnest until about chapter two, so get through the first few chapters and soon you'll be drowning in so much delicious tea that you won't be able to put it down! Just make sure that you've read Ender's Game beforehand, as it is another excellent book and kind of necessary to understand the setting and background of this book.

Speaker for the Dead is a very interesting book about compassion and humanity. This book is a sequel to Enders Game, though you don't need to remember much from the first book, as this one doesn't rely too much on the details of the last one. This book takes place 3000 years into the future, and Ender, going by his birth name Andrew, is now a Speaker, but not just any Speaker. He is the original Speaker for the Dead who wrote The Hive Queen and The Hegemon. However, he is also the one who committed the original Xenocide, an act deemed horribly by many. This creates an interesting dynamic, because many unknowing people condemn Ender the Xenocide, while praising the Speaker for the Dead. Many also don't believe that he is the original speaker, due to the fact that he existed 3000 years ago, and assume he is a regular speaker. He is on the planet Trondheim, and gets a call to speak for a man named Pipo from the colony of Lusitania where a species called the Piggies live. He decides to take on the call and travels there through space travel, which will take him 2 weeks, but the outside world will pass 22 years, which causes many changes to the world he is leaving behind, and the world he is going towards. Overall, the book is very good. I enjoyed learning more about the colony of Lusitania and how their everyday lives go by, and also learning more about the piggies which live there. The book had a good cliffhanger at the end, and made me want to read the next book in the series, which takes place immediately afterwards. Another part of the book that I enjoyed is the impact of Ender which the reader can see, after comparing the colony before and after he went there.

I prefer this book to Enders game. It is a slower, suspense driven novel.Positives:+ Unique alien creatures and lanscape. The interactions between the creatures and various species on the planet was interesting.+ Characters/Dilemmas: Each character is given a specific plot conflict/dilemma. Each grows and is addressed throughout the bookNegatives:- The book is written at a higher level. It isn't as focused on the character level. This makes it slightly more difficult to relate too.

In a Word this book, is as humanistic as ever could be a book that I’ve ever read. Admittedly that’s not very much, but I will say it does not read like a textbook. It is a story of two consciousness coming together and mutual understanding in complete and total symbiosis. If you are a cynic, this book is most certainly not for you. If on the other hand you are an optimist, and have the purest hope that humans can achieve a symbiotic relationship with another species that is as conscious as we are of ourselves and our own self importance and survival then you may like it as much as I do.

I will be honest: it took me 20 years to get to this book. I was on the fence as to whether I would actually want to read any further than the perfect book, Ender's Game. I did and I am glad. And I am reading Xenocide now. So good. I didn't want to read it because I never thought that Ender Wiggins was a monster. He didn't know he was committing xenocide, did he? Even though he did? He was the result of both nature and nurture. Nature and nurture and a lot of hammering and a lot of intense pressure and fire made him who he was: a soldier, a killer, and from, basically, a sociopathic family. But this book still has that beautiful dynamic tension of compassion and insouciance, professional detachment. Love it. Recommend it fully.

This is quite a different read than Ender's Game. If you're looking for action packed, space war bugger demolition, this isn't it. It reads like a great character exploration book. At first, to be honest, I didn't like it. I didn't like that Ender was a background character and these new people weren't that exciting. By the middle of the book I was gripping the pages in excitement. Things been to unfold fast and I liked that the pace picked up. I was crying at some points, angry and in the end left with the same feeling that I had when I finished Ender's Game...I couldn't wait to start the next book in the series. Don't hesitate, it's a good read if you stick with it and leave your expectations from EG on the side.

Having read some of the reviews for this book I was at first reluctant to try it. However I bought it and read it and was enchanted by it. I honestly think that previous reviewers who so heavily criticised this book must be at least a little dense. Either that or they find it difficult to 'get into' anything more complex than Enid Blyton. An excellent book in which Orson Scott Card shows himself to be truly a Genius.

Not everyone will like it, it's mostly family drama. There is next to no sci-fi action, but somehow I was even more excited when reading it. It was all in how Card was able to write various characters. I've never seen anything like this before.A word of warning: if you liked this and think about continuing the series, then please don't. The books after this one aren't worth it. They damage Ender's relationships and mistreat various characters unncessarily. Just stop after reading this one.

Blew my mind! Complex moral issues made much clearer by the author’s gently guiding hand. A compelling story: it moved me, excited me, it really made me think. Possibly the best book that I have ever read. Wonderful.

I liked Enders game and I liked this, too. I'm surprised to see that people who liked Ender's game didn't like this - it's still really good, imaginative sci fi, but the content is different - it's much more to do with peace and diplomacy than war and tactics.One similarity is that you'll probably be able to guess certain twists in the story before the "big reveal".I found Ender a bit annoying at times because he always seems to get his own way, and he seems to be at the centre of everything that's ever been important in the history of the world in which the story takes place... I can only think of one mistake he makes in the entire book. Then again, I had a similar problem with Ender's game - that the three kids seemed to be running everything...I didn't like the character of Quara much either... I kept forgetting she existed... oops!Some of the other characters in the book are really likeable though, especially Jane and Pipo. The storyline is intriguing, and I'm looking forward to reading Xenocide, although it doesn't have as many great reviews as this and Ender's Game do.Some of the bits at the end of this book seem a bit plot-hole-y to me, but mainly the bits that seem like a intro to Xenocide (the phone call between him and Valentine).This book doesn't leave you feeling cheated or incomplete, and I feel like the main questions in this novel have been wrapped up.The prologue makes for an interesting read, too. I read it before and after the novel, but I wish I'd only read it before, because it gives you some clues about the plot.All in all, it wasn't perfect, but it was a good read, and I liked it.

Ender's Game felt like an intelligent action packed story. Speaker for the Dead feels like a murder mystery mixed with an analysis of small town family life.Speaker for the Dead is interesting, but it doesn't feel like a true sequel to Ender's Game.Orson Scott Card wrote the Shadow Saga many years after Ender's Game / Speaker for the Dead, but the Shadow Saga feels like a much truer sequel to the excellent Ender's Game. The Shadow Saga features the same characters as Ender's Game, the same time period, and the same action packed writing style.It would be hard to give a review without spoiling the storyline, but it feels almost dishonest to call Speaker for the Dead a sequel to Ender's Game. Different time frame, the protagonist has a different attitude, and the book has very different pacing and focus.It's a good book, but it feels like Orson Scott Card was demonstrating his diverse writing skills, rather than creating a book which would appeal to fans of Ender's Game.