Speaker for the Dead
Speaker for the Dead is in the Ender’s Game series. It is the second book that has Ender as the main character.
I love, love, loved Ender’s Game so I was sooo looking forward to this book! But it is crazy different from Ender’s Game. At times it’s hard to even think this is the same character from the first book in the series, but then again Ender was only a child in the first book and now a man in this book.
One huge difference is that this book takes place solely on the planet Lusitania and not in space at all like in Ender’s Game. It is still heavy on the sic-fi thought so if you are looking for a solid sci-fi with tons of science this is the book for you.
In this story humans have colonized Lusitania and there is a native species living on the planet the humans call Pequeninos because they are small and resemble pig like people. These people are thought to be primitive by the humans and they are highly religious about the planet and plants around them.
The humans have that common theme not to disrupt the life going on in the planet to let it progress on it’s own like so many other sci-fi tropes. So not exchange of technologies or ideas and only limited contact.
This sci-fi turns into a Crichton-isk kind of book in that there is some mysterious disease killing both species and they must figure out this mystery in order to save both. In order to do this each species has to understand the other.
Overall for a sci-fi this book was a good read, but to compare it or the characters to Ender’s Game seems like a stretch. Ender is still brilliant and compassionate, but lacking in the leadership department and strategizing against an equal opponent.
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