64. Speaker for the Dead. Orson Scott Card. 1986. 382 pages. [Source: Library] [audio book, science fiction, sequel]
First sentence: Rooter was at once the most difficult and the most helpful of the pequeninos. He was always there whenever Pipo visited their clearing, and did his best to answer the questions Pipo was forbidden by law to come right out and ask.
Premise/plot: Speaker for the Dead is the sequel to Orson Scott Card's Ender Game. But you may not know--though you certainly may know--that there would be no Ender's Game novel if Card had not had this novel in mind, Speaker for the Dead was THE STORY Card wanted to tell. And the character Ender Wiggin needed a bit more fleshing out than a short story could provide. Hence he set about writing the novel Ender's Game. This one is set THOUSANDS of years later, but Ender is still young. Young being relative. Probably in his thirties? Andrew Wiggin is THE SPEAKER OF THE DEAD. The original, though he travels from planet to planet being "a" speaker of the dead. No one guesses how old he really is and ALL of his life's experiences. He's lived long enough that his heroic actions are seen as anything but heroic. Though he has wrestled with his conscience for centuries and doesn't need the praise or condemnation of others.
The book is set on the planet Lusitania. It's a colony with humans--Catholic colony, for the most part--and pequeninos, the "piggies." Readers meet colonists--several families--and the families readers get to know are the ones most interested in the science, biology, and culture of the piggies. Quite a few things happen that lead to SEVERAL people calling out for a speaker of the dead to visit their world. Though just a few weeks have gone by since the first message came through requesting his services--in the meantime two more, I believe, go through. But Andrew's arrival isn't met with applause and appreciation--not at first. But his coming will change EVERYTHING....for better or worse.
My thoughts: I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this book. I do think it is better than Ender's Game. Ender's Game is one I've read more often. I know the scenes, the characters, the plot. But it is Speaker for the Dead that is RICHER and more nuanced perhaps. It has DEPTH. It is so good.
This is what Orson Scott Card has to say about the book,
"How did Speaker for the Dead come to be? As with all my stories, this one began with more than one idea. The concept of a "speaker for the dead" arose from my experiences with death and funerals. I have written of this at greater length elsewhere; suffice it to say that I grew dissatisfied with the way that we use our funerals to revise the life of the dead, to give the dead a story so different from their actual life that, in effect, we kill them all over again. No, that is too strong. Let me just say that we erase them, we edit them, we make them into a person much easier to live with than the person who actually lived.
I rejected that idea. . . No, to understand who a person really was, what his or her life really meant, the speaker for the dead would have to explain their self-story--what they meant to do, what they actually did, what they regretted, what they rejoiced in. That's the story that we never know, the story that we never can know--and yet, at the time of death, it's the only story truly worth telling."
There are many things I loved about Speaker. I love how Ender has matured into Andrew. I loved seeing how much he's grown...changed. He is wise. But his wisdom doesn't make him less human, it makes him more human. I love how this novel is about taking broken things, messy things, ugly things--and making them whole, making sense of the chaos, making them beautiful. In some ways, it is more philosophical than Ender's Game. Again, it is the characters that make Speaker for the Dead such an outstanding novel. His characters aren't perfect--far from it--but they're real.
Sickness and healing are in every heart. Death and deliverance are in every hand. (240)
Of all of the humans, he is the one who will understand us. (347)
When you really know someone, you can't hate them. (370)
Once you understand what people really want, you can't hate them anymore. You can fear them, but you can't hate them, because you can always find the same desires in your own heart. (370)
© 2026 Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews
