It’s been a really long time since I read Speaker, but I really liked it.
First, middle school me loved how different it was from Enders Game. It was a challenge, and it felt like the author was purposefully shedding the fans of the first novel with something less approachable.
Second, it hooked me in immediately with the mystery, and then really wrestled with what would anthropology with non-human cultures look like, and how could they go wrong? And how could that bridge be mended? In a way that middle school me could appreciate.
It seemed to complete Enders Game in the sense that in the first novel, he accidentally genocides a species based on a historic cultural misunderstanding between alien sentient races, and Speaker is his chance to learn from his experience and prevent it from happening again. I ate up that moral.
I may have rose-tinted glasses and only remember the good parts.
Also I remember liking Xenophobia (?) but even then I realized that even though the OCD descriptions were really interesting, there was something *off about making them all Asians with genetically-engineered disabilities to keep them from being too smart (I forget the exact plot, but that felt pretty icky even though I didn’t understand why and still can’t really explain it).
I liked Enders Shadow because Bean’s background was eye-opening, but the other Shadow novels felt pretty weird in how they framed and simplified world politics.
It’s been a really long time since I read Speaker, but I really liked it.
First, middle school me loved how different it was from Enders Game. It was a challenge, and it felt like the author was purposefully shedding the fans of the first novel with something less approachable.
Second, it hooked me in immediately with the mystery, and then really wrestled with what would anthropology with non-human cultures look like, and how could they go wrong? And how could that bridge be mended? In a way that middle school me could appreciate.
It seemed to complete Enders Game in the sense that in the first novel, he accidentally genocides a species based on a historic cultural misunderstanding between alien sentient races, and Speaker is his chance to learn from his experience and prevent it from happening again. I ate up that moral.
I may have rose-tinted glasses and only remember the good parts.
Also I remember liking Xenophobia (?) but even then I realized that even though the OCD descriptions were really interesting, there was something *off about making them all Asians with genetically-engineered disabilities to keep them from being too smart (I forget the exact plot, but that felt pretty icky even though I didn’t understand why and still can’t really explain it).
I liked Enders Shadow because Bean’s background was eye-opening, but the other Shadow novels felt pretty weird in how they framed and simplified world politics.