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)

Weird reading

The reading performance was just weird. It switched between four readers randomly, and two were just annoying. They also had random music start playing in places it didn’t make sense to.

Hard to top

Granted if you are not interested in Sci-Fi this might not be for you but I think that not only the story is entirely interesting, the performance of the audiobook makes it even more captivating. I don't agree with all of the philosophy or points brought up in the book but I certainly appreciate how Orson Scott Card manages to employ deeper subjects into a fictional world and create a picture of what he is trying to communicate.

A good sequel

I really enjoyed Enders game and loved the ending so much i had to read the other books in the series. it was a little hard to fallow at the start with a lot of jumping around between 3 groups of people, but the pay off when they meet was wroth the rewinds to understand who is talking and to get there names down.

wonderful!

this book I believe is the real story of Ender Wiggin. Ender's game was also a wonderful piece of literature, but is more of a prequel to his real story.

Whats not to love?

Honestly, this is my favorite book ever written. Read by my favorite narrators ever listened to. You cannot go wrong with this selection.

Thought provoking and meaningful beyond measure

I dont normally write reviews for anything, however this book has had such a profound impact on me i felt the need to write this down.

Speaker for the dead shows us, in full, brutal truth, how we treat others, whether they are of a different culture, race or species, and even how we treat the dead.

This book has made me wish that i could have someone speak the dead of my father, speak the truth, the good, the bad, everything.

Read this book and then ask yourself, when you meet someone, will you treat them as ramen or framling? or will you yourself behave like varelse?

Performance still lags

Thank goodness this book didn't have all the weirdness of battle school. This one had a better story and you can tell this is the story he meant to write first. This one kept me interested in the saga so I am glad I gave it a chance...after Ender's Game that was not guaranteed.

Wow

After reading Ende's Game, I was thinking it would be hard to keep up with such a good book but the author did it again. Started off slow at the beginning but got very interesting very quickly. Couldn't wait to listen to it on all my commutes which I can't say for every book.

A deeply thoughtful follow-up to Ender’s Game

When I first listened to Ender’s Game, I was struck with a thought - given all that he’s gone through, what sort of adult will Ender Wiggin become? Speaker for the Dead contains the answer to that question, and it’s well worth discovering what it is.

Without giving too much away, Ender is now an adult and he serves as a Speaker for the Dead, a type of humanist preacher who can be called to deliver a reflection on the life of someone who has died. These reflections are non-religious, often very honest, not pasting over the ugly parts of the departed’s life, and allow the person to be remembered for exactly who they were, both good and bad. This in itself is an interesting concept, and when Ender is called to speak the death of a researcher into an alien species, he goes, begins his enquiries, and things become very interesting. This is also a solid science fiction novel about how humanity might begin to connect with an alien species, and the consequences of these encounters.

I loved the depth of this book and its exploration of human relationships, and its inclusion of philosophical and theological discussion around guilt, innocence, redemption, salvation and forgiveness. There are some truly deep topics to delve into with Speaker for the Dead, and if it sounds like something you’d be interested in, I can only suggest that you listen to this audiobook and that you’ll also enjoy it.

Still my favorite book

This is my favorite book of all time. There is one problem though, in the audio they play music occasionally so much louder then the reading that you can't tell what he is saying.