Earth Unaware

Orson Scott Card is back with another entry in his Ender series.  This time, however, he is taking us back to the first invasion of the Formics, before Ender was born.  He's teamed up with Aaron Johnston (who co-wrote the entertaining Invasive Procedures with Card a few years back) for this new trilogy and they do not disappoint.  If you love space opera with great characters, Earth Unaware is a book you shouldn't miss.

 Usually I like to write up my own synopsis of the book, but I'm feeling lazy right now, and it was a few weeks ago when I finished the book.  So here's the synopsis from the Tor website:

The mining ship El Cavador is far out from Earth, in the deeps of the Kuiper Belt, beyond Pluto. Other mining ships, and the families that live on them, are few and far between this far out. So when El Cavador’s telescopes pick up a fast-moving object coming in-system, it’s hard to know what to make of it. It’s massive and moving at a significant fraction of the speed of light.

But the ship has other problems. Their systems are old and failing. The family is getting too big. There are claim-jumping corporates bringing Asteroid Belt tactics to the Kuiper Belt. Worrying about a distant object that might or might not be an alien ship seems…not important.

They're wrong. It's the most important thing that has happened to the human race in a million years. This is humanity's first contact with an alien race. The First Formic War is about to begin.

There you have it.  The characters are great, the setting interesting, and the conflict quick and tense.  It reminded me a lot of Leviathan Wakes--which I reviewed not too long ago--though not quite as good.  I think it's the best science fiction novel Card has written in quite some time, and I'm excited to see where the series goes.  It did end abruptly, but I was satisfied with where things were left.  

The audio was a bit annoying.  Card's books typically have a full cast--different narrators for different characters--but EU was missing the familiar voice of Scott Brick.  His usual narrator, Stefan Rudnicki, is present but doesn't narrate any of the main characters.  I wasn't a fan of the two narrators that took up most of the book.  Would have been better to feature Rudnicki and Brick with the others doing for the minor characters.

Earth Unaware gets 4 stars out of 5.  I highly recommend it if you're an Orson Scott Card or space opera fan. 

P.S. Mr. Card, I love ya, man, but please finish the Alvin Maker series before starting another series!!

Shadows in Flight

I've lost confidence in Orson Scott Card over the years.  It pains me to say it, because I consider him one of my top three favorite authors, but his books haven't interested me as much for quite some time.  I avoided his latest, Shadows in Flight, so as not to be disappointed again.  Luckily, I have a dad who buys more audible credits than me, and gave SiF a listen after running out of new audiobooks for April.  Card, I can happily say, is back to his old form in this continuation of his Bean offshoot of Ender books.

SiF is a short story.  It's around 55,000 words, which is about half of Card's normal novel length.  This hurt the book in the end, since I absolutely wanted more, but the quality of story was up to par.  That sounds so asshole-ish to say.  Who am I to judge Orson Scott Card's quality?  I certainly couldn't do any better, nor could many professionals working today.  I only mean that I enjoyed SiF more than his recent novels, and felt it fit well into the Ender universe of tales.

The story is simple.  Bean is dying, his body growing ever onward to heart failure as his genetic alteration turns him into a giant.  He and his three children--all of which have his same genetic altering--are flying through space at a speed near to light.  Over four-hundred years have passed on Earth since they left, but because of the effects of relativistic travel, they've only seen five years inside their ship.  They find an old Formic ship orbiting a planet, and drop in to see why a supposedly extinct alien race seems about to form a new colony.  Mysteries are uncovered, creepy crab aliens are encountered and gunned down.  SiF was a fun listen.

The last chapter of the book was at the same time my favorite and least-favorite part.  Least-favorite because it ended after that.  I felt there should have been a few more chapters to finish the story.  Despite the sudden end, the last bit really hit me as a new parent, listening to Bean ponder the path his life had taken.  Bean sacrificed much of his own life for that of his three children on the space ship with him.  I think I liked SiF as much as I did because it got me thinking of my own daughter, and about the sacrifices I have made, and am willing to make for her.  I even started tearing up, thanks to Card.  He hasn't made me feel emotion from his books in a very long time.  And going along with my last post, this is a great example of a writer using resonance in his work.  Card gave Bean the perspective of a loving parent, which I have had a dose of since my girl was born.

Shadows in Flight is by no means Card's greatest, but besides Ender's Shadow, I thought it the best of the Ender offshoot series.  If you're a long-time fan of Ender and Bean, you'll enjoy the book.  If you've never read the two series, don't bother starting here.  You'll be lost.  But if you're one of the few, why in hell haven't you read Ender's Game?  It's one of the greatest tales of the last century!

Shadows gets 3 out of 5 stars.