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But what these unobservant birds

Poodlerat’s book blog

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Speaker for the Dead

April 13, 2008 at 8:18 pm · Filed under Book Reviews, Favourite Books, Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror

52. Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card (Science Fiction) 382 p.

I don’t know what to say about this book, because it’s so good, so wonderful, so human, in ways I don’t know how to articulate. But I’ll try.

Speaker for the Dead begins about 3,000 years after the end of Ender’s Game. It takes place on the small colony world of Lusitania, whose only human inhabitants are a small village of Brazilian-Portuguese Catholics. However, Lusitania is also home to the first sentient alien species humanity has encountered in the Bugger Wars three millenia earlier. Due to the time dilation effect of faster-than-light travel, Andrew Wiggin is still only 35 years old. When the call goes out for a speaker for the dead, he can’t resist travelling to Lusitania.

That’s a really inadequate summary, and it only touches on the plot, which, although excellent, isn’t at the core of the book. It’s the people and ideas that make Speaker for the Dead so special, that set it apart from other science fiction. OSC manages to explore some really compelling xenology and xenobiology (i.e. alien anthropology and biology), without sacrificing character development. Not all the people in Speaker for the Dead are human, but they are all interesting and complex and very, very real, because Card never takes the easy way out.

A good example of this is Bishop Pelegrino, the religious leader of the community. At first, he seems like the reactionary, righteous, slightly stupid Catholic priest recognizable from many other books, but Card is a better writer than to stop there. Although he does have these traits to some degree, they are far outweighed by his ability to be flexible, by his caring for his community, and by his compassion.

I love the world Card creates on Lusitania, because it’s just so interesting. The Piggies, of course, and the mystery of their society, but especially the human community of Milagre. I look forward to seeing more of both in the third book in the series, Xenocide. When I started this book, I didn’t think any sequel could come close to being as good as Ender’s Game, but I was wrong. As amazing as that book was, Speaker for the Dead somehow manages to live up to it. I can now number Orson Scott Card among my very favourite writers.

Pages read: 14,286

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3 Comments »

Carl V. wrote, on April 14th, 2008 at 3:31 pm:

Amazing, wasn’t it? I was in awe of Orson Scott Card’s writing ability as I read this book. I too wondered how it would be after reading Ender’s Game and I was not disappointed, in fact I was blown completely away. This was one I could barely stand to put down for ‘life’ as I was reading it. I will forever cherish the experience of reading this book and will certainly reread it again in the future. I look forward to reading Xenocide sometime this year.

Poodlerat wrote, on April 14th, 2008 at 4:22 pm:

Yes, I’m more and more impressed with OSC every time I read something of his. Ender’s Game is one of the few perfect books I’ve read—ones that I know I’ll think are just as good at the 100th re-read as I did at my first encounter. I still can’t believe that he wrote a sequel that’s equally good. So far, those two top my list of sci-fi favourites!

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[...] Speaker for the Dead, by Orson Scott Card (but what these unobservant birds) (tags: orson.scott.card speaker.for.the.dead ender.saga science.fiction humanity spirituality aliens philosophical family.life multicultural) [...]

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