Book Review: Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card

The sequel to Ender’s Game, Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card was quite dissimilar from its predecessor. This was likely because the novel takes a more traditional approach to storytelling and features adult characters, instead of children.

To control Earth’s population and spread life around the galaxies, the Starways Congress has colonized one hundred habitable planets with people of different nations. Taking place 3,000 years after Ender’s escapades in Battle School, Ender– now called Andrew (still alive, due to all of the space travel he’s done), is called to a Catholic Portuguese colony on the planet Lusitania. There, the indigenous alien species (called “piggies”) are befriending human inhabitants, then murdering them. Andrew grapples with this mystery, and also becomes entwined with the dysfunctional families living on Lusitania.