Speaker for the Dead (Ender's Saga, #2)
Orson Scott Card
Now available in mass market, the revised, definitive edition of the Hugo and Nebula Award-winning classic. In this second book in the saga set 3,000 years after the terrible war, Ender Wiggin is reviled by history as the Xenocide--the destroyer of the alien Buggers. Now, Ender tells the true story of the war and seeks to stop history from repeating itself. ... In the aftermath of his terrible war, Ender Wiggin disappeared, and a powerful voice arose: The Speaker for the Dead, who told the true story of the Bugger War. Now, long years later, a second alien race has been discovered, but again the aliens' ways are strange and frightening...again, humans die. And it is only the Speaker for the Dead, who is also Ender Wiggin the Xenocide, who has the courage to confront the mystery...and the truth. Speaker for the Dead, the second novel in Orson Scott Card's Ender Quintet, is the winner of the 1986 Nebula Award for Best Novel and the 1987 Hugo Award for Best Novel.
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2017
Listened to the audiobook, and thought it was very well narrated! I haven't been a fan in the past of multiple narrators (like a whole cast), but I thought this was done in big enough chunks and the readers were great.
My memories of this book were pretty faint, so it was fun to re-read and remember. While I understood a bit better the big topics and overall what was happening (better than when I was 16ish), I did have some problems:
- there was a bit of insta-love between Ender and pretty much everybody. I know he is supposed to be super compassionate and empathetic and that he feels that he "loves" someone as soon as he "knows" them, but it was a bit odd to read, and felt way too fast on everyone's part. The children love him in just a few sentences and are super trusting of him. He and Novhinia have like 2 conversations together in the whole book, yet they love each other and marry at the end?
- The piggies were cool, if a bit dense. I understand that the xenologers were using anthropological guidelines and following careful strict rules to not explain too much human culture and stuff to the piggies, but I felt like it was super weird to read, there were so many times when I was thinking "why didn't they ask the piggies?" To me, this felt like a plot device in the same way that some farces have everyone not quite talking to each other and it leads to hilarious misunderstandings, when two lines of dialogue and strait-talk would clear everything up.
- I liked the character of Jane quite a bit, even if believing in her is the biggest suspension of disbelief in the whole book. I was very frustrated that she was so petty and distant to Ender after he shut her off. I understand it was a betrayal, it just felt childish. And maybe it's because I've never felt such a betrayal in my life, but this was dramatic and a way to connect Jane/foist Jane off onto Miro.
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