It's 3,000 years after Ender's Game, but due to the complexities of interstellar travel, we still have Ender, as a 35 year old man. Yay! He has become Speaker for the Dead, a position revered, and slightly feared, by this society. He is working at a University. Valentine is pregnant with her first baby, and he's looking forward to being an uncle. And then, he gets a call to speak the death of a researcher on the planet Lusitania. Much to Valentine's chagrin, he decides to go. The voyage takes only weeks for Ender, but 22 years for everyone else. By the time he gets to the planet, he knows that Valentine's baby will be a young adult, while he will not have aged at all. Despite the personal pain it will cause, he's still nursing guilt about the Buggers. There's a different alien life form on this planet, affectionately called the Piggies, and his sense of responsibility wins out. This is the story of Ender's time on Lusitania, attempting to find redemption for himself, while helping the humans who have colonized there. When he arrives, he finds the welcome less than warm, and there are unfortunately other deaths that need speaking.
I listened to the audio book, and at the end, the author himself talks about the fact that this was the book he intended to write all along--that Ender's Game was the intro he had to write in order for Speaker to make sense. While I loved this a tiny bit less than Ender's Game, it still pulled me in with it's wildly imaginative new world. Unraveling the mystery of the Piggies was great fun, and the character feel like old friends now. I can't wait to continue my adventures in the Enderverse!
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