Speaker For The Dead

Author: Orson Scott Card
Reason for Reading: YA Reading Challenge, Margaret A. Edwards Reading Challenge
Rating: 5/5

I read Ender's Game not too long ago, and I found it to be an enjoyable book. But when I put down Speaker for the Dead, I was completely in awe. Speaker for the Dead is more than a sequel, it is a sci-fi masterpiece in its own right.

Speaker for the Dead is set 3000 years after the events of Ender's Game. A new sentient species has been discovered on the planet Lusitania, and this time humanity, it seems, has learned its lessons from before. 3000 years ago, Ender Wiggins was used as an unwitting tool to wipe out the Buggers, a race of hive-mind aliens. This time, the Piggies (as the new species are called) are to be treated with respect and interfered with as little as possible. The scientists studying the Piggies are under strict restrictions not to tamper with their cultural development, but the Piggies are so foreign, so different. But when one of the scientists is murdered, there is one person qualified to discover the truth and prevent another Xenocide.

Thanks to the relativistic effects of space travel, Ender Wiggins is still alive. Although he was the originator of the destruction of the Buggers, after he discovered that the Buggers had not intended to harm humans, he wrote the true story of the Buggers and became the Speaker for the Dead. He's been wandering the galaxy for millennium, waiting for the opportunity to amend for the destruction of the Buggers. When he sets off for Lusitania, he sees it as his chance at last to make up for old mistakes. By the time he arrives, however, the Piggies have killed another scientist and the possibility of Piggie and human cultural understanding seems remote.

There aren't many science fiction novels where the writer manages to tackle both interesting philosophical issues and to write satisfying characters all at the same time. This book has a number of well-written, fascinating characters that grow and develop during the course of this book. The heart of this book is philosophical, though, asking what it means to be human. Any book that tries to take on a topic like that is almost certain to bite off more than it can chew, but somehow this book manages to live up to its premise. I can't recommend this one highly enough.