Book Review: Speaker for the Dead

Despite several pitfalls during my consumption of this novel, the sequel to Orson Scott Card's beloved Ender's Game, I've finally finished it.

In the introduction to the novel, Card proclaims that Ender's Game was simply an exercise that had to be completed to provide a necessary background for the book he wanted to write all along, Speaker for the Dead. This comment gave me unrealistically high hopes. The book starts off at a break speed pace- we have murder, we have mystery, we are immediately introduced to the major themes of the novel: the politics of assimilation and otherness, the role of technology in our lives, and the ever pertinent and interesting ways in which Ender navigates these issues and his own redemption.

After spending thousands of years jet setting around multiple galaxies, disguising his true identity and remaining eerily young, Ender has found the planet where he will stay and complete his life's work. The completion, however, is not a straightforward or easy task. First, Ender has to play the politician, the priest and the ambassador to various groups of humans and other species, most notably, the Piggies. The Piggies are an "alien" species carefully observed and studied on the planet. Yet, as their primary ambassadors (xenologers) turn up murdered for several generations, residents become more and more wary and the mystery and driving force of Speaker for the Dead is introduced. Due to laws born out of the xenocide that takes place in Ender's Game, human beings can neither ask direct questions or pass judgment on the Piggies (and, aside from a few, most do not interact with them, the entire human colony being fenced in with Piggies kept on the outside). Discovering the Piggies' motivation, which influences the question that is asked again and again in the story, "are they like us? Or are they alien?" is what Card relies upon to keep the reader turning the page.

I won't give away the answer, but I will say that I was disappointed. The last one hundred pages of the book felt like a hasty summation of a number of themes and story elements that were otherwise slowly developed. The most fascinating parts of the story were reduced to semi-religious, ill suited magic tricks that aren't very satisfying unless, perhaps, you are a Mormon, as Card is. Maybe it is inevitable that Card's devotion should influence his work, but it was conspicuously (and thankfully) absent from Ender's Game, but in this novel it provided a too convenient and too proselytizing conclusion. Not too mention a love story mostly absent from book, but overburdened in the last thirty pages for the sake of a happy ending. The love plot and rushed pacing of the story as we neared the end even diminished my love of Ender, who seemed to become an overbearing and tactless diplomat.

Despite developmental handicaps and a bit too much preaching for my taste, there remain moments in Speaker for the Dead that are deeply effecting- moments that the story hinges upon and practically make the entire novel worth reading. Card is like the Nabokov of young adult science fiction-- some moments seem so real, and cut so accurately to the truth and wonder of human experience that pages of drudgery become a necessary and joyful task.

Do I recommend this book? For Ender fans, religious folks, and critics, yes. For those would not like to engage very deeply with the writing, it doesn't seem worth it.