Honeyed Words: Speaker For The Dead by Orson Scott Card

Speaker For The Dead by Orson Scott Card · 12 October 2007

OK, I lied about the pizza post coming up next. I planned to post about pizza, but when I got around to it I found the site down and myself unable to post. Then in talking to Kim, who is back home safely and overwhelmed by school work put off by her vacation, I agreed to do a post about Speaker for the Dead and let her have the pizza post as the first in her next series. So, pizza lovers, bear with me for a post and you shall soon have your pizza.

Now to speak the death of Speaker for the Dead, which I'm sure must be the absolute most common way to start a review of the book. :) I won't keep you in suspense: I liked the book a lot. As the sequel to Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game, which I read last year, Speaker does a great job of not simply riding the coat tails of its predecessor and really tells a story of its own. What you get in Speaker is almost something you could read without having read Ender's Game. I say almost because it would be such a shame to spoil Ender's Game so thoroughly with all that's revealed in Speaker. Speaking of spoilers...

Spoilers begin here. Beware, Ender series newbies!

Early on in the book I was disappointed to find out that it takes place 3000 years in the future of Ender's Game. I felt such a disconnect to the events for the first book, which I liked so much. I thought I'd be coming into the sequel getting to live in the same world of Ender I lived in the first time around. This is no The Empire Strikes Back though! What you get in Speaker is a story with a couple of the character's from Ender's Game (mostly Ender) technically in the universe of the first book, but with a plot almost entirely disconnected from that of the first book. While I realized this a few dozen pages into the book, only at its conclusion was I pleasantly surprised to find that Card had done it again and produced a whole new great story in the universe.

The basic plot, as any good summary will tell you, is that Ender has been traveling around from planet to planet at "relativistic" speeds. At each planet he learns about a deceased person, speaks their death as he did that of the race of the buggers, and moves on well within a year. Hence, Ender is now 3000 years old and looks 35. This book begins with the humans' discovery of a new race, the pequeninos, on a planet shared by a human colony. The humans quickly begin studying the newfound species in as discreet a manner as possible (think of Star Trek's Prime Directive here), until the piggies, as they call them, up and kill one of the xenobilogists doing the studying. Ender is called in to speak the death for that killing and, upon arriving, learns that another xenobiologist has been killed. Secrecy surrounds the meaning of these killings and Ender has a bona fide mystery on his hands. Add on to that what is pretty much the only remaining plot element from Ender's Game, the hive queen of the buggers that Ender is carrying around, and you've got 300 pages of more fun reading in store for you!

I'm not going to delve into the central mystery of the book-- the meaning of the murders-- as I don't think that could do much but rehash it for those of you who have read the book and spoil it for those of you who haven't and brazenly ignored my above spoiler warning. Suffice to say, Card makes unwrapping such a mystery a lot quicker work than 300 pages suggests, at least to this reader. His character's are clearly defined, separated, and of interesting makeup, his dialog is smart and realistic, and his plot moves along quickly without lingering long enough to have the reader guessing what's coming next. And while that's the central focus of the book, it wasn't my favorite part.

This is no place to be ashamed of one's sci-fi enjoyment. I'm the kind of guy who likes to take in a good episode or movie of Star Trek. If you're that kind of person as well, or even just know anything about the show outside of that Picard is bald and Kirk talks funny, you'd know that the franchise introduces alien races at a pace that very few others can match. Unfortunately, I think TV is a bit too quick of a pace for the writers sometimes and you end up with what fans refer to as the "forehead of the week". Here, you get a species that is oh-so-alien, but they are pretty much human with pretty much one twist. This happens a lot, and not just in Star Trek.

Well, this did not happen in Speaker. The pequeninos are about as original a species in the sci-fi landscape as I've come across. The book uses its xenobiological characters as a device to go really in-depth into the race of the piggies. The reader gets to learn all about them and the myriad ways they differ from humans, or the buggers if you will. The piggies, while vaguely like humans, differ so profoundly in their life cycle that, after thinking about it for a while, I can't recall any species in any sci-fi that's anywhere near them. Yes, their culture, behavior, technology, and so forth are pretty standard alien fare, but their life cycle is amazing to me. I'm not going to spoil it here, even if this is within a spoiler warning section. Suffice to say, you're in for a really unique treat with the piggies!

Spoilers end here.

OK, so in summary I thought Speaker was great. It didn't survive on good memories of its predecessor, the character, dialog, and plot were spot-on, and it featured one truly amazing alien species that readers have the pleasure of getting to know in depth throughout the entirety of the book. If you haven't read Ender's Game, go read it and then read Speaker. If you've read Ender's Game and haven't read Speaker, I recommend you get crackin'. In closing, a link to a comic from the great XKCD.