Speaker for the Dead

By: Orson Scott Card

Narrated by: David Birney, Stefan Rudnicki

Length: 14 hrs and 8 mins

Publisher's summary

In the aftermath of his terrible war, Ender Wiggin disappeared, and a powerful voice arose: the Speaker for the Dead, who told the true story of the Bugger War. Now, long years later, a second alien race has been discovered by Portuguese colonists on the planet Lusitania. But again the aliens' ways are strange and frightening...again, humans die. And it is only the Speaker for the Dead, who is also Ender Wiggin the Xenocide, who has the courage to confront the mystery...and the truth. Orson Scott Card infuses this tale with intellect by casting his characters in social, religious, and cultural contexts.

This, the author's definitive edition of the sequel to Ender's Game, also includes an original postscript written and recorded by the author himself, Orson Scott Card!.

Browse more titles in the Ender Wiggin series.

©1986, 1990 Orson Scott Card (P)2002 Fantastic Audio, an Imprint of Audio Literature

Critic reviews

• Hugo Award Winner, Best Novel, 1987
• Nebula Award Winner, Best Novel, 1986

"The most powerful work Card has produced. Speaker not only completes Ender's Game, it transcends it." (Fantasy Review)

Amazing

Well worth the hours of listening. If you liked the first book (Ender's Game) at all, you will love this book. Its a must read

Best in the series

I’m a long time fan of the Ender Quintet. Speaker for the Dead has been my favorite book ever since I first read it. It’s well written and devastatingly impactful on both philosophical and emotional levels. The book is worlds apart in terms of style and story progression from Enders Game. Despite the differences Speaker for the Dead holds its own in the quintet and against Enders Game. If you are a diehard Enders Game fan this book may not be for you. It’s slightly harder to comprehend and it’s less “action-packed”.

The audio book is very well performed. The performer use different voices for different character perspectives which helps the listener follow the story more fluidly. I am especially impressed with the pronunciation of the Portuguese words and sentence structure that are so prevalent and crucial in the story.

Overall the story and performance of the Speaker for the Dead audio book is amazing and I would recommend it to anyone who wants a good read.

incredible insights into the human condition

the afterward by card says so much that I hadn't quite fully grasped. I deeply love his even handed insights into humanity.

amazing

great listen! story is awesome and narrators do a fabulous job telling the tale. highly recommended

Excellent Book!

loved it! The narrators are great and clear, the story sweeps you with it, you don't want to stop listening.

Another Great Addition to the Enderverse

I enjoyed Ender's Game but LOVE this book. the entire concept alone is powerful, but the fact that it's a sequel in a length series makes it all the more impressive.

Terrible reading. Fairly good book

The audio performance of this book was horrendous.

For other books in the ender series that I’ve listened to thus far, the performers were consistent in when and whom they read for. In this one it was both inconsistent and the readers would change seemingly at random. This made it significantly harder to follow what was happening.

As for the books content, it was fairly good, but had an uncomfortably slow start.

great story, good narration

It's a great story, and I do love all the cast (really lovely voices and acting).
My onlygripe is that sometime (like 5 or 6 times throught the book) the narrator would change basically mid-paragraph which really threw me off. Save for that, everything's awesome.

Thoughtful and engaging

Loved it! I'm the parent of 3 boys. My husband and 26 yr old son both recommended it and I will recommend it to my 22 and 15 year olds. There are many important lessons about compassion and understanding woven within a compelling well told story. Highly recommended fpr humans of all ages.

Pretty Good

Ender's Game was a lot better in my opinion. This book really didn't feel like a sequel as much as it did a different story that happened to take place in the same universe, with the same main character - only about 20 years older and ~3000 years later. The Hive Queen was the only aspect of this that seemed to be a continuation of the previous book.

All in all, I think it was worth the read, it just wasn't what I expected from the previous book.

The "piggies" were cool, but it is hard to take a race of tiny bipedal pigs seriously.

I just bought the third book, and plan to read that soon.

Do I recommend this book? Yes, I think that this will be a very interesting series and will give me a lot to think about for years to come.