It would be nice to say that this book left off exactly where Ender's Game ended. That the story of the young boy who the world hated but you fell in love with is right exactly were is it was left, but that is not true.
The Speaker for the Dead begins about 3,000 years after Ender's Game is finished. Ender and his sister, Valentine, are still alive because of their countless journeys traveling at light speed. Ender and Valentine are traveling from planet to planet to speak for the dead. They end up on a a planet mostly filled with water and Valentine falls in love with a seaman there.
This book though does not start out with these familiar face. The reader is first taken to a unfamiliar planet named Lusitania. A colony of mostly Portuguese speaking Catholics has been set up to study the planet. An alien species has been found in the forests of Lusitania. Instead of interacting with this new species and sharing knowledge the Starway Congress (the government of the Hundred Worlds inhabited by humans) tasks a member of the colony to study them.
Pipo is the xenologer (alien anthropology) at the beginning of the book. He and his teenage son Libo go out into the forest once a day to talk to the new species. The aliens are know as Pequenios or more commonly "piggies". The Starway Congress has told the xenologers to gather information about the piggies but to not give them any information about the human worlds. This process makes learning about the piggies very slow going. Until one other person from the colony joins in on their research.
Novinha's parents died when she was very young. Her parents were the biologist for the colony. They discovered a cure for a disease that was crippling the colony, but not before they themselves were stuck with the sickness. She had been living alone and in silence for many years. At the age of thirteen she wants to take the exam to become the new biologist. Pipo is charged with the task of figuring out why this young girl wants to take the test. Novinha explains that she wants to learn more about the piggies. She wants to be able to speak their story and know their past. Pipo agrees to let her take the test and help him and Libo with the research about the piggies.
Years go by with more and more things being found out about the piggies. Rooter is one of the piggies that commonly converses with the xenologers. During the years of supposed peace Rooter get murdered by the other piggies. His chest is cut open and his organs are spread out onto the ground. There is also a tree planted inside of him. All three of them are confused. They know that it is some peace to a puzzle they cannot figure out.
One day Novinha was looking over slides from all of the animals and plants on Lusitania and she finds a connection. Pipo looks over her research and figures out something about the piggies that they had not previously known. He rushes off the ask the piggies if this is true. He ends up just like rooter. Cut open with his organs spread out. Libo and Novinha are crushed. Libo wants to know what made Pipo go out into the forest and Novinha will not show him because she does not want him to end up the same way. Novinha is crushed and calls on a speaker to come help make sense of Pipo's death.
This is where Ender comes in. He hears about the death and decides to go to speak the death of Pipo. He knows this time Valentine cannot come with him. She is having a child and found the man she wants to spend her life with. He leaves on a journey that to him will only seem like weeks but to Valentine and to the people on Lusitania it will be 22 years. When he arrives things are much different than when he left.
The already exciting plot takes off from there, but the fantastic plot is not the only reason to read this book. The characters are so interesting. They are not the most complex characters ever written. Their motives are often easily seen and the truth can easily be found because most of what they do is out of love. Just as the humans in the book have to decide if the piggies are aliens or people the reader also must decide. Thinking about what actions of the characters I found most interesting I starting thinking about the piggies first. Their actions have reason. The piggies are not mindless animals. When they killed Pipo and than later Libo they have reasons. There is motivation behind every characters action in this book.
Speaker for the Dead, just like Ender's Game, will mess your mind a little. Both books show humans going to point of extreme in the human mind. Ender's Game was more about what people could be pushed to do when trying to save their own race. It showed how impersonal and uncaring the human race can be. Speaker for the Dead showed how compassionate and understanding the human race can be. Ender and so many other's on Lusitania risked everything they had to help the piggies. They defied the Starways Congress to come to the aid of a race that many people did not even consider anything but animals. After reading Ender's Game I was stuck wondering how far I could go. How many people I would harm to ensure that my life would stay safe, which are not very happy thoughts. After Speaker for the Dead I am stuck wondering if if I can stand up for the things I find morally right if they will cause harm to me. I can only aspire to be like Pipo and Libo in all situations that require sticking to what I believe.
Speaker for the Dead is one of those books that I think everyone would enjoy. Yes it is Science-Fiction which is not always up everyone's alley, but it is very approachable. When I first read Ender's Game the way it was described to me I was afraid. I was worried that it was going to take hours of reading to just understand one chapter, but it turned out to be just the opposite. At the beginning for Speaker of the Dead I felt overwhelmed with all of the new information about this distant planet, but it got better. Keep going. The plot will pick up after about ten pages. The book is well worth even the work.
Enjoy and Read On!!
Lindsey
