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counthannahreadsalot 's review for:
Speaker for the Dead
by Orson Scott Card
An interesting book, although one that contains some questionable ideals. I enjoyed the continuation of Ender’s Game, although I didn’t find this as conceptually strong, even though Card readily admits he only wrote Ender’s Game to set up this book.
The ideas around cultural contamination and the preservation of the piggies were fascinating- I enjoyed that part of the book and examining how different piggy culture was. However… it was an interesting choice to call them piggies. I think it was supposed to indicate general human distaste for the “other,” but to some extent I couldn’t tell if it was a choice by the author or an admission of the author’s own bias.
Likewise, the treatment of women in this book made the plot suffer. In Ender’s Game, we get to know Valentine, who is a politician and a force to be reckoned with, even as she, too, is manipulated by the adults that torment Ender. However, almost as soon as we regroup with Ender in Speaker, we find Valentine happily married and pregnant. All of the females in the book, from Jane being dependent on Ender to the complete lack of women in piggy culture, indicate at best a general ignorance of and lack of emphasis on the importance of women. Ela is maybe the only well-developed female character in the entire novel.
Beyond those questionable items, the book was also just hard to read. Card writes in a way that blends internal monologues with dialogue and third person observations. I didn’t find this style jarring in Ender’s Game, but the shifts in perspective were more pronounced and confusing here. The book is long and dense, and conveys a great deal of thought, but it certainly could have been edited to be shorter and more readable.
Overall, though, I did enjoy Speaker. Card has some unusual ideas and I enjoyed watching him unravel piggy culture and the lives of particular characters.
The ideas around cultural contamination and the preservation of the piggies were fascinating- I enjoyed that part of the book and examining how different piggy culture was. However… it was an interesting choice to call them piggies. I think it was supposed to indicate general human distaste for the “other,” but to some extent I couldn’t tell if it was a choice by the author or an admission of the author’s own bias.
Likewise, the treatment of women in this book made the plot suffer. In Ender’s Game, we get to know Valentine, who is a politician and a force to be reckoned with, even as she, too, is manipulated by the adults that torment Ender. However, almost as soon as we regroup with Ender in Speaker, we find Valentine happily married and pregnant. All of the females in the book, from Jane being dependent on Ender to the complete lack of women in piggy culture, indicate at best a general ignorance of and lack of emphasis on the importance of women. Ela is maybe the only well-developed female character in the entire novel.
Beyond those questionable items, the book was also just hard to read. Card writes in a way that blends internal monologues with dialogue and third person observations. I didn’t find this style jarring in Ender’s Game, but the shifts in perspective were more pronounced and confusing here. The book is long and dense, and conveys a great deal of thought, but it certainly could have been edited to be shorter and more readable.
Overall, though, I did enjoy Speaker. Card has some unusual ideas and I enjoyed watching him unravel piggy culture and the lives of particular characters.