In his introduction to Speaker for the Dead, Orson Scott Card explains that THIS was the book he wanted to write all along, and while he’s very pleased that Ender’s Game has done so well, that he really just intended it as an introduction to Speaker for the Dead. I remember being really confused by that as a kid, because while I liked Speaker for the Dead and Xenocide just fine, I didn’t think they were as good as my beloved Ender’s Game. As I’ve gotten older and reread the series time and time again, I realize more and more that Speaker and Xenocide are very, very good — I just don’t think I really understood them when I was younger.
“No human being, when you understand his desires, is worthless. No one’s life is nothing. Even the most evil of men and women, if you understand their hearts, had some generous act that redeems them, at least a little, from their sins.”
3,000 years after the events of Ender’s Game, Ender and his sister Valentine (still in their late 30s due to the power of space travel and relativity) have been traveling the universe, which humans have been settling under the uniting power of the Starways Congress. Ender works as a speaker for the dead — taking what he did for the Hive Queen and the Hedgemon and applying it to humans across the Hundred Worlds. He and Valentine have (kind of) settled in one spot when he gets a call to speak the death of a xenologer who had been studying a new species — a new species that murdered him.
Fair warning: Speaker for the Dead is filled to the brim with philosophy and religion and a lot of yakking about both. Card says at one point that Speaker is un-filmable, and he’s absolutely right. But if you enjoy reading philosophical musings about alien species (and it turns out I do), then this is the book for you!
