![\"Speaker](\"https:\/\/d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net\/books\/1295660894l\/7967.jpg\")
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This is the sequel to Ender’s Game, though in my meandering rereading pattern, I went with the parallel shadow series first. The reason for this is two-fold: First, I just connected more with Bean than with Ender. Second, I dimly recalled not caring for these sequels. Unlike the original Ender’s Game novel, which I have now read three times, I am only on my second reading of its sequels. And also unlike Ender’s Game, I can’t say that I would ever reread them again.<\/p>\n
Ender is all grown up now, and three thousand years from home thanks to the time dilating effects of relativistic light speed travel. He’s set himself the lifelong penance of bringing back the race he destroyed in a xenocide. He goes from world to world, never stopping long, all in hopes of finding a place for the last egg to hatch and bring her species back to life.<\/p>\n
He is also a speaker for the dead, someone who speaks the truth of a person’s life. In that role, he is called to an obscure colony world which also happens to be the only other place in the universe where — so far — intelligent life has developed.<\/p>\n
I won’t go into plot details. Let me just reflect upon my feelings as I read this book. It’s good. It’s interesting. The piggies are nicely alien, well imagined. For those who just read Ender’s Game and are considering reading the sequel, fair warning: This is a very different book. It’s more sober and philosophical. More grown up, perhaps.<\/p>\n
My biggest reservation about this book is a personal one of minimal importance, yet it bugged me. Ender ends up falling in love with a woman and getting married, and I don’t like her at all. He sees himself within her because she is guilt-ridden, but I felt that her guilt was a selfish one, whereas his was not. There’s a romantic in me that wanted better for him.<\/p>\n
Still, this was a small part of the plot and the rest asks many of the questions science fiction has long tried to resolve: What is sentience? What is humanity? What are human capable of (individually and as a group)? And when do we have the right to kill?<\/p>\n
The best part of this book was the creativity of the piggies and how very alien they really were. Anthropologists trying to study them didn’t even know the right questions to ask because the answers were so outside their experience.<\/p>\n
I do recommend this to those who want to continue reader the Ender saga, but I must say — I know that a lot of kids end up reading Ender’s Game (either in school or independently). And while there’s nothing inappropriate in this book, this is not written for youths. Which isn’t to say don’t read it, just realize that this isn’t like Ender’s Game, and it’s targeted at adults.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This is the sequel to Ender’s Game, though in my meandering rereading pattern, I went with the parallel shadow series first. The reason for this is two-fold: First, I just connected more with Bean than with Ender. Second, I dimly recalled not caring for these sequels. Unlike the original Ender’s Game novel, which I have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3065","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-what-im-reading","category-science-fiction-what-im-reading"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3065","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3065"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3065\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3107,"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3065\/revisions\/3107"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}