serinlea reviewed on 3/21/2011

Helpful Score: 1

Stylistically, this book was nearly a 180 from "Ender's Game", and is the better for it. There is much greater depth of character and story here...which is not surprising when you learn that EG was originally a short story, and was only fleshed out into a full novel when Card wanted to use Ender's character in "Speaker".

"Speaker for the Dead" echoed the best of Octavia Butler and Ursula K. LeGuin with its complex interactions between cultures and unstinting anthropological detail on an invented alien race. It surprises me now to learn how radically different Card's personal views are, and how he seems unable to treat the real world with the same sense of nuance and interconnected spirituality that he creates in this fictional colony. I originally thought the idea of a Speaking would be a wonderful funeral service for those of us who don't believe in an afterlife...but with the legacy of a homophobic religious fundamentalist as its creator, the notion loses its appeal.

Scientifically, this novel had the truest-to-known-physics explanation of near-light-speed travel I've ever encountered in science fiction. Voyages take thousands of years in real time, but the travelers themselves experience this as much less time. Ender, who has done quite a bit of traveling, is in his mid-30's physically, but the events of "Speaker" take place three thousand years after the conclusion of "Ender's Game".

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