- Publisher: Macmillan Audio
- Publish Date: 2002
- Print Published: 1986
- Duration: 14 hours 10 minutes
- Author: Orson Scott Card
- Read By: David Birney, Stefan Rudnicki
- Audible ASIN: B000079XXN
- Print ISBN: 978-1250773067
- Book 2 of 6 in the Ender Saga
Speaker For The Dead by Orson Scott Card is the second book in the Ender Wiggins saga. This book won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards in 1987. In the interview with the author after the audiobook, Card states that this was the book he really wanted to write and Ender’s Game was just a necessary set up for this one. It is certainly a deeper book with more philosophical and moral investigations, but I have to admit that I enjoyed the original Ender’s Game story better. Speaker for the Dead is a very different book from Ender’s Game.
It has been about 3,000 years since the events of Ender’s Game. In that time, Andrew “Ender” Wiggins has spent a great deal of time in star ships traveling at speeds approaching that of light. Because of that, Ender is biologically only in his mid-thirties even though he and his sister are now the oldest living humans.
He has taken on the role of a (the) Speaker for the Dead, a semi-religious position. A Speaker’s purpose is to tell a deceased person’s story after they are gone. To speak their life truthfully, including the good, the bad and the ugly about the person. The Ender in this book is more mature, but you can see how the boy from the war college could become the man who would become this Speaker. The empathy that he used to understand his enemies, he now uses to understand his subjects… and those around them.
On the planet, Lusitania, humans have found the only other sentient race since the encounters with the ‘Buggers’ three millennia ago. In an attempt to prevent cultural contamination, they have created an isolated enclave and only allow the xenologers who are studying these Pequeninos ,very limited access and interactions. The Pequeninos are commonly called “Piggies” due to their porcine snouts.
When the senior xenologer is brutally killed by the Piggies, the young xenobiologist , Novinha, calls for a Speaker to speak his life. The nearest speaker is Andrew “Ender” Wiggins, some 22 years away by star ship, and he immediately sets forth for Lusitania. The 22 year journey is only a few weeks to Ender, and by the time he arrives, the original request for a speaker has been canceled and two others have been made.
Much of the book is Ender’s interactions with Novinha’s family as he prepares to speak the life of her recently deceased husband, and the death of another xenologer at the hands of the Piggies. In the telling of the truth of these lives, he not only salves the wounds from those lives, but turns the entire colony on its head.
Speaker for the Dead is a morality tale about how we deal with ‘others’, who really is an ‘other’ and why we define something as ‘other’. It also is morality tale about how and why people may be as they are, and the healing nature of the truth. We may be able to understand why someone who is not nice, or even evil, may have become that way if we know their entire story. We may be able to forgive some of their actions, even if we do not excuse their responsibility for their own actions. I highly recommend this one.
Matt Truxaw’s newest book is Monster, which released on 1/12/2026. This urban fantasy, horror, thriller will keep you turning the pages.
He is also the author of the hard science fiction thrillers: “Plastiphobia/Plastivore” and “Anthrophobia: A Teacher’s Tale”
You can find them all on Amazon in Paperback, Hardback, Kindle and/or free to read with Kindle Unlimited.
When you read any of them, he would really appreciate a review/rating on Amazon or your favorite book seller/book reader site.
More about Matt:
He was born in Orange County California many years ago and he still lives there. He has been reading books for most of those years and writing up book reviews for the last few years. He gets MANY of his books out of the library/Libby so expect a lot of old science fiction classics book reviews and other science related reviews in addition to newer books he comes across.
If you want to be ‘in-the-loop’ on these and other works, you can follow his author’s page on Amazon or his Facebook page.
For more reviews and articles by Matt here on Amazing Stories (Click here).
Monster: A Novel by Matt Truxaw
