Speaker for the Dead

Review

Disclaimer: If you read this book, I suggest not paying for it. OSC’s views should not be rewarded. Visit your local library.

I remember checking this book out from the library, probably I was in 7th or 8th grade. I’d just finished Ender’s Game and enjoyed that. I was probably unprepared for how different Speaker for the Dead is, and yet it was immediately preferable to me. I love the immense empathy and search for understanding within, and the warmth that is so often there.

I listened to the audiobook, which has a kind of cast production, but not in a way that I’m used to. Instead, it has multiple narrators that aren’t exactly connected to characters. It isn’t a production like an audio drama. Some narrators seem to focus on specific characters (in the sense of perspective chapters, though I can’t recall if that is how it is written). But I found that a little confusing.

Difficult to read this book, which contains such warmth and empathy, and think about the political opinions of Orson Scott Card. His reputation at this point is well known, but it is still worth perusing the “Personal Views” section on his Wikipedia (rarely a good sign when someone has one of those sections). To put it bluntly, the views are reprehensible and repugnant. Card was a forerunner to J.K. Rowling in the case of an author using their influence to commit harm. Speaker is probably one of the lesser homophobic books—I at least did not notice any overt or subtextual homophobia, though I may have missed some—but some of his other books are approaching insanity. Speaker does feature an incest plotline, which is rather odd, especially since it is quite warmly depicted compared to how he writes about much less complicated things elsewhere.

It is unlikely I ever read any other book by OSC. This has been and remains the only book of his that is worth space in my memory.

Notes

No notes since this was an audiobook, and I didn’t make clippings while listening.