Ender's Game: Speaker for the Dead

By Aaron Johnston

The next chapter in the bestselling Ender saga is here Ender Wiggin was 12 years old when he destroyed an alien race. Burdened with guilt, he wrote Speaker for the Dead and created a pseudo-religion that spanned the known worlds. Now an adult, Ender is called to investigate a murder committed by a new alien species with a seemingly gruesome nature. Can he uncover the truth before another species and more human lives are lost? Based on the award-winning novel by bestselling author and science fiction legend Orson Scott Card. Collecting ORSON SCOTT CARD'S SPEAKER FOR THE DEAD #1-5.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0785135863
• ISBN13: 9780785135869
• Release Date: May 2011
• Publisher: Marvel Enterprises
• Length: 120 Pages
• Weight: 1.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 10.5" x 0.5" x 7.3"
• Age Range: 15 to 17 years
• Grade Range: Grade 10 to Postsecondary

Customer Reviews

We shall never cease from exploration.

We shall never cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time. - T. S. Eliot We start where the last book left off. Now, Ender, the author of "The Hive Queen and the Hegemon," after spending three thousand years as a Speaker for the Dead, is called to a planet where a new race exists and there’s a chance to make things right. Even though the author says that you can read this book as a complete story without reading the first novel, it is part of a five-book series. True, the essential background will be repeated or contemplated in this volume it is still not as complete as reading the first volume. Again, you can skip the introduction, but you'll miss important details about the author and his purpose. The introduction can also serve as part of a good writing course. The first book was thinly veiled as a version of "Starship Troopers," and you can see that somewhere, the author must have read some field manuals. In "Speaker for the Dead," you can see that Orson Scott Card knows his Catechism. I used to teach RCIA, so he could not fake it. I also come from a strong LDS background. I suspect he spiced it up with a little "Tony Hillerman." Our main character may have shifted focus a bit from the first book, but people change, authors change, and we change. The only part of the writing that did not go too smoothly was the inclusion of references to "The Tempest." it seemed a tad forced where other authors such as Dorothy Sayers for example with "stale flat and unprofitable" would not be spotted if one had not read "Hamlet" but it fits her story like a glove. I can see why this book has a problem with being pigeonholeed as sci-fi or space opera, etc., as it has all the elements needed to thinly veil a message. What is the message, you ask? Read the book.