Book review: Speaker for the dead

 

 

BY CHRISTIAN KING

J.Hop Times Literary Critic

 

     Speaker for the dead by Orson Scott Card, sequel to Ender’s Game, takes place three thousand years in the future. The book’s forerunner, Ender’s Game, is much different than Speaker for the dead in many ways.

   The author even makes it apparent in his introduction that he intended this book to be easily understandable, without any background knowledge from its predecessor.

     Ender, now known as Andrew Wiggin, to hide himself from existence, has been shamed upon for his actions against an alien species thousands of years ago, with the phrase “Ender’s Genocide” being known by almost every human.

   Even his original name is thought to be a dirty word. After the war, he goes on to anonymously publish a manifesto, under the name “Speaker for the dead” about speaking for the aliens that died in the war.

   The book is acclaimed to be one of the best pieces of literature in the universe and many people have devoted their lives for speaking the complete truth of someone’s life at their funeral. Ender visits a highly religious colony to speak the death of a famous biologist but ends up getting stuck there, singled out as the devil, and runs into a lot of trouble.

     This book, justifiably, is meant for patient readers, who are okay with the many character point of view switches and substantial amount of details used in the text. Speaker of the dead also has a plot which most likely will never be able to get adapted into a movie.

      Overall, Speaker is a great book. Even though it is not what most would expect as a sequel, but as a spin-off of the original book, with nothing in common except keeping two main characters in the plot line.