Speaker for the Dead (Ender Wiggin Series #2) » (Revised)

With a raft of science fiction awards and a dedicated following, Orson Scott Card writes imaginative and compelling novels that also explore questions about morality and religion. His Ender series is the most popular; but he also offers a fresh take on the Bible in his Women of Genesis books and has authored other history-based fantasy series.

Ender Wiggin, the young military genius, discovers that a second alien war is inevitable and that he must dismiss his fears to make peace with humanity's strange new brothers

Publishers Weekly

Card's novel Ender's Game introduced Ender Wiggin, a young genius who used his military prowess to all but exterminate the ``buggers,'' the first alien race mankind had ever encountered. Wiggin then transformed himself into the ``Speaker for the Dead,'' who claimed it had been a mistake to destroy the alien civilization. Many years later, when a new breed of intelligent life forms called the ``piggies'' is discovered, Wiggin takes the opportunity to atone for his earlier actions. This long, rich and ambitious novel views the interplay between the races from the differing perspectives of the colonists, ethnologists, biologists, clergy, politicians, a computer artificial intelligence, the lone surviving bugger and the piggies themselves. Card is very good at portraying his characters in these larger, social, religious and cultural contexts. It's unfortunate, then, that many of the book's mysteries and dilemmas seem created just to display Ender's supposedly godlike understanding. A fine, if overlong, novel nonetheless. (March 3)