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Speaker for the Dead

By: Orson Scott Card
Narrated by: David Birney, Stefan Rudnicki
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Publisher's Summary

In the aftermath of his terrible war, Ender Wiggin disappeared, and a powerful voice arose: the Speaker for the Dead, who told the true story of the Bugger War. Now, long years later, a second alien race has been discovered by Portuguese colonists on the planet Lusitania. But again the aliens' ways are strange and frightening...again, humans die. And it is only the Speaker for the Dead, who is also Ender Wiggin the Xenocide, who has the courage to confront the mystery...and the truth. Orson Scott Card infuses this tale with intellect by casting his characters in social, religious, and cultural contexts.

This, the author's definitive edition of the sequel to Ender's Game, also includes an original postscript written and recorded by the author himself, Orson Scott Card!.

Browse more titles in the Ender Wiggin series.
©1986, 1990 Orson Scott Card (P)2002 Fantastic Audio, an Imprint of Audio Literature

Critic Reviews

  • Hugo Award Winner, Best Novel, 1987
  • Nebula Award Winner, Best Novel, 1986

"The most powerful work Card has produced. Speaker not only completes Ender's Game, it transcends it." (Fantasy Review)

What listeners say about Speaker for the Dead

Average Customer Ratings
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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Great story, Pathetic narration

Any additional comments?

The use of so many narrators who come and go almost in mid sentence, totally destroyed the book for me. Throw in random bits of music without context makes a disappointing listening experience.

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4 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

what is with the random music and changes?

disappointed with the performance a great story though, it just switches with no rhythm or reason

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3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Not your average performance.

If you are humming and/or hahing, I suggest downloading this book, then likely enjoying that immensely. Now that is out of the way:

I think I understand what was attempted here, but I don't believe that the execution quite got there.

Each and every narrator has a striking voice, and quite probably have pulled off the entire narrative themselves. The point is, however, that the narrative is not of one character, nor the 'reader's' internal voice, but the 'speaker'.

An engaging story telling device, but one that ended out trapping them. Having the narrators not attempt character voices for the most part lead to confused dialogue, as well as a striking contrast when, probably due to long and unclear dialogue sections in the text, the narrator did bring in some affliction to distinguish characters.

The trap set and sprung wasn't too much of a distraction from brilliant performances from a strong text with good direction.

What was a complete distraction, however, was the odd, interfering, and downright annoying music cues. Just idiotic.

A literary (or aurally) device attempted, stuck with until the bitter end is not necessarily a bad thing. This particular performance brought real emotion as I was listening. The music at the "important" sections of the plot broke the experiment nearly beyond repair.

Were the combination of performance, text, and direction not so strong, I would have asked for a refund.

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Ian
  • 21-05-2015

<br />great but not what you're expecting.

very different to ender game but a great look at what the future might be like

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Remarkably inventive

And the plot plays so well. Politics, a bit of religion and some philosophy in a wonder Sci Fi Opera

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Disappointing compared with Enders Game

It took a long time for the story to hook me in. For most of the story, the characters were not particularly relatable or even remotely likeable... Which was an integral part of the story line itself, but made it hard for me to care about what happened to the characters.

The narration was just horrible. Truly horrific. Different voices for the same characters, random snippets of oddly placed music, unconvincing voice actors, a unnecessarily forlong and whiny Valantine narration. I've listened to many hundreds of hours of audio books; this one was the worst with regard to breaking the fourth wall.

The last quarter of the book was more engaging as the mystery slowly revealed itself. But it was a hard slog getting to that point. If the character of Ender hadn't resonated with me in Enders Game, it is unlikely that I would have been invested enough to finish this book.

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  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    2 out of 5 stars

Mostly harmless...ahmm...boring

After the strong start of the first novel in the series, this one feels parochial, low stakes, and quite removed from science fiction. The religious and philosophical musings are tedious, and that's really the bulk of the novel The accents adopted by the narrators are a nice touch in theory, in practice it made for an even more unenjoyable experience for me.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

fabulous

Such a fantastic book. Couldn't stop listening. Amazing characters, amazing concept. utterly enthralling.... pure genius

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

fantastic story slightly let down by the narration

brilliant story and each narrator was great but the issue I had was the myriad of narrators which seemed to chop and change in a disruptive way and the volume levels of each narrator was different making it a pain to listen to while going to sleep. minor complaint in the big scheme of things. brilliant in every other way.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Such a great piece of literary fiction

It is an intense story, especially in the beginning with lots of bad things happening to the characters, but it shows how love can overcome circumstances and bring resolution.

The book also has an interesting plot of what would happen if we tried to integrate completely different cultures.

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