Exactly how steamy is this story?
PG-13
Speaker for the Dead does speak about sex, but not steamily. There are no explicit scenes, and some chaste cuddling between Miro and Ouanda is about as flagrant as it gets. However, the book does include numerous adult themes, starting with Novinha's adultery and moving on to the complicated reproduction of the piggies, complete with infantile pregnancy and children eating their way out of the womb.
Speaker for the Dead is in many ways a cautious, PG response to more sexually explicit sci-fi works of the 1970s.