[amazon_link id=”0765329042″ target=”_blank” container=”” container_class=”” ][/amazon_link]Title : Earth Unawares
Author : Orson Scott Card, Aaron Johnston
Genre : Sci-fi
Pages : 368
Publisher : Tor
Source : Netgalley/Publisher ARC
Rating : 4/5

Ender’s Game and Ender’s Shadow are two of my favorite sci-fi books. Although I haven’t been able to move further into the series because I didn’t like where they were going, I do think that Orson Scott Card is one of the best sci-fi writers around today. In Ender’s Game we know that earth is fighting the war against the buggers, and the Formic wars are mentioned, but other than that we don’t get much backstory. Earth Unaware is the 1st book of the Formic Wars, a new series which forms a prequel to Ender’s Game, so this was a must-read for me.

There are three parallel tracks here – the first is of a mining ship El Cavador, the second of a ship conducting tests for the Jukes corporation, and the third is of an elite commando squad, the MOP, led by Wit O’Toole. The first two storylines are fleshed out pretty well, but the third is a little disjointed and I’m hoping it’ll come into play in the next book of the series – no doubt the MOP will become the basis of the training academy that Ender is sent to.

Free-floating miner families mine asteroids in the Kuiper belt, and one among them is the El Cavador family. It is unceremoniously “bumped” from the asteroid it has been mining by a Juke corporate ship, when Lem Jukes, captain, decides to use the asteroid as target practice for testing out the new Juke developed glaser (gravity laser). Crippled by the unexpected attack, El Cavador’s crew tries to make repairs to the damages from the Juke ship. Meanwhile Victor Delgado, a young fixer-upper/inventor from El Cavador detects a fast moving alien ship coming right at them. It turns out to be a scout ship for the actual mothership, but even so does some damage to the already floundering El Cavador. In their brief encounter with the scout ship, the El Cavadorians discover that the ship is manned by human sized ant-like creatures they term hormigas.

As the alien mothership nears it disrupts communication signals and El Cavador is unable to warn other miner ships of the danger. It looks like the aliens are headed for earth, and if there is no communication, earth will be caught unawares. Victor hatches a plan to warn earth, but it is risky and may not work . . .

Meanwhile on earth, Captain O’Toole is recruiting men for the MOP from elite battle squads around the world – Israel, India etc. It is interesting that the MOP land in Mumbai and try to recruit from a highly regarded Indian commando unit. Other than that I thought there was too much gun/manuoevre related detail for a sci-fi book, especially since it doesn’t actually go anywhere in this book. I pretty much speed-read my way through the MOP story, glossing over the tactical war-related bits.

I quite liked this book, for the detail, the descriptions and the engaging storyline. Vintage Orson Scott Card. Victor is a great protagonist – young enough for nascent romance, brave enough to stand upto an invincible foe, and selfless enough to sacrifice his welfare for the greater good. The only chink in the armor, as I said, was the MOP angle which seemed to dither too long on unimportant details.

This was a great read; I look forward to reading the next book of this prequel series.