The Book Stacks

Three thousand planet-bound years have fled while Ender the star-traveller remains young. In that time his name has become anathema, for he is the one who killed an entire race of thinking, feeling beings. No other has been found – until Lusitania is discovered.

The young race there is a chance for mankind to redeem the previous destruction. The only humans allowed near them are trained xenobiologists. But once again there are tragic misunderstandings. And when Ender, as Andrew Wiggins, is called to Lusitania to speak the terrible deaths of men killed by the aliens, he walks into a maelstrom of fear and hatred.

In the second of the Ender books, Card brings us to a whole new world filled with wonderful creatures the reader wants to learn more about. And once again, he also gives us human characters who are easy to love and whose lives and emotions translate easily to the reader.

From the beginning, this story presented a mystery: the mystery of the piggies. I was as eager to solve it as the characters were as the sometimes horror, sometimes strangeness of their actions puzzled me as they did the characters.

Overshadowing all the smaller mysteries was the large mystery of exactly who and what the piggies are and their evolution. This is, thankfully, revealed at the end and went above all my highest expectations of a satisfying explanation.

Ender’s words and reactions towards the other people who study the piggies struck hard with me at some points. Even I wondered how to make the piggies fit into human terms instead of thinking how the humans would feel if the piggies tried making the humans more like them. I had this subconscious assumption that the human way of life is better. That is, until Ender made it clear how he felt about that view.

Card does a very good job of presenting not just a different culture but a different life form. He teaches us in story form how to appreciate and learn from each others differences instead of following the assimilation instinct.

He also uses planet-bound time versus light speed time to his advantage. The time differences work well for the purposes of the story, and yet he doesn’t make the reader feel ‘jostled’ or out of sorts when using them.

Speaker for the Dead did not set my mind spinning like Ender’s Game did, but I still enjoyed thought-provoking storylines. As I expected, Card made me think long after reading the last page, which I believe is the mark of a good novel.