Speaker for the Dead (1986) is the second book in the Ender’s series; it is preceded by Ender’s Game (1985) and followed by Xenocide (1991) and Children of the Mind (1996). Card also published a prequel to the series, First Meetings in Ender’s Universe (1999), and he later published a novel set between the events of Ender’s Game and Speaker for the Dead—Ender in Exile (2008)—but Speaker for the Dead is still considered the second installment of the series. The books are intricately linked, with Ender’s Game developing the context for Speaker for the Dead, and Speaker for the Dead developing the context for Xenocide and Children of the Mind.

In Ender’s Game, Ender is born because his older siblings, Peter and Valentine, were too violent and too passive, respectively. He is taken to Battle School, where he is trained to be a soldier to fight against the hive queens in the Bugger Wars. Ender’s training is intense, and he becomes exhausted by the end of the process. During his final examination, he uses the Little Doctor, or the Molecular Disruption Device, to destroy the hive queens’ planet. His superiors mislead him into thinking he is participating in a training scenario when in reality he is fighting the actual war and destroying the hive queens’ species.