Ender’s Game is considered by many, to be the best Science Fiction novel of all time. It is probably only second in popularity to Frank Herbert’s Dune. Ender’s Game truly is a remarkable novel, one of the few that manages to transcend its genre.

When I started reading Speaker for the Dead, its supposed sequel, I couldn’t wait for it to pick up where the Ender’s story had left off. But it only took a couple of pages for me to be deeply disappointed. It was soon clear this was not really a sequel at all. These weren’t children anymore, and the tone of the novel was far more serious and grown up.

Because Orson Scott Card holds the extraordinary honor of having won both the Hugo and Nebula awards two years in a row, first for Ender’s Game and then for this so called sequel Speaker for the Dead, I forced myself to keep on reading. I am glad I did. This has to be one of the richest, most complex and awe inspiring novels of all time. It astonishingly manages to speak, on many levels, directly to the human condition. This is an amazing thing for a science fiction novel to do.

Speaker for the Dead is in many ways far superior to Ender’s Game. It is by far Orson Scott Card’s crowning achievement, and one that sadly, I fear, he will never be able to surpass. Even sadder however, is how the success of Ender’s Game has so thoroughly overshadowed this far superior, much more important novel. If you’re a fan of Ender’s Game and Orson Scott Card, I implore you to read this novel. If you read it for its own merits and not as a sequel, I promise you, you won’t be disappointed.