Reviews

Earth Unaware by Aaron Johnston, Orson Scott Card

morepagesplease's review against another edition

4.0

I enjoyed this audiobook. It featured many of the same readers I've come to appreciate from the other audiobooks in the Ender universe. Despite knowing the ultimate conclusion to how everything will turn out on the large scale, I was surprised by how suspenseful a read I found this to be.

raylawler's review against another edition

4.0

I really enjoyed this book and look forward to reading the rest. My favorite POVs were Wit and the MOPs so I hope they play a larger role in the sequels. This was a nice reminder that I do still enjoy Orson Scott Card's writing.

gizmoto16's review against another edition

3.0

It's hard to be as good as Ender's Game, but I definitely enjoyed this. It was nice having multi-character perspectives, lots of action and provides a tantalizing peek into the backstory of the Formic War.

acadian_wanderlust's review against another edition

4.0

I read the series out of order. This is a prequel which has some spoilers in the main series (starting at the Ender's Game). I will say was a fantastic book, author kept me glued ....had a hard time putting the book down.

yhtgrace's review against another edition

2.0

It's been a long time since I (re-)read Ender's Game/Ender's Shadow, but there's something weirdly un-Card-like in the writing style for Earth Unaware that makes me wonder if a) someone else wrote this book, b) this is just a shallow novelization of a comic book (which ok, it is), c) this is just a shallow novelization of a movie-to-be.

There are a thousand fears I have for the upcoming Ender's Game movie, chief amongst which is how they are going to pull off Ender's inner monologue. Ender's thoughts and emotions form the real heart of Ender's Game, not the flash-suits or the guns or the aliens or the spaceships but the growing up, because Ender's Game is firmly in the genre of the bildungsroman- it's a tearing down of childhood innocence that culminates, dramatically, with Ender's realization in the final scenes of the book. This, unfortunately, is a lot harder to translate onto screen, which makes me worry that the movie is going to be all flash-bang-sci-fi-alien-fighting-action-scenes.*

Earth Unaware, if made into a movie, would have no such problems. The characters are just interesting enough to be interesting, and unlike Ender or Bean or the hundreds of other characters that populate the Speaker/Shadow universes, we have no real insight into them, just sort of hand-wavey-motions so that we see vague outlines of the characters but not the characters themselves. They're ghosts in a plot that is otherwise action-packed and fast-moving, and this would probably work on screen, or in a graphic novel, but certainly not in a three-hundred page book.

*(That said, I've only been peripherally aware of what's going on for the movie, and everything that's come out so far looks promising, and so I await the movie with equal parts excitement (Ender's Game having left such a huge impression on my eleven-year-old psyche and all that) and trepidation.)

dreamerfreak's review against another edition

5.0

Let me start off saying, that this is the first Orson Scott Card book that I've read (though certainly not the last), so while I had a vague notion that it was some sort of prequel thing to the Ender books, I didn't really know what it was about. Fortunately, I didn't need to know a thing. It was amazing anyway.

Earth Unaware follows a large and scattered group of characters through the initial discovery of the "hormigos", or Formics, when they first invade our galaxy. It's not the easiest book to read,

Spoiler

death abounds,

but it is fascinating none the less. The incoming alien ship tests the motives and courage of everyone they encounter as they decide what's most important to them... and how best to stay alive.

Fascinating characters and world-building details fill this book. From little Mono, sky-watcher Edimar and lead mechanic Segundo to gamma propulsion and free mining families, I didn't want to put this book down once I picked it up. And actually... I didn't. I finished it the same day I started.

I'm anxiously awaiting the second book of The First Formic War, and in the meantime, I'll probably be picking up Ender's Game. Don't pass this one up.

[I received this book for free through First Reads and was not required to write a positive or any other type of review. All opinions stated herein are solely my own.]

krismoon's review against another edition

2.0

Skip the first half of the book, I'll tell you what happens in two sentences. Victor is in love with his second cousin, but she dies. Another person on the ship dies due to do a business tycoon's son steering this other ship; people be pissed.

And there you go. Skip ahead to the second half of the book.

amburrella's review against another edition

4.0

This book was picked out for an online book club I have with some friends, and I will preface it by saying I’ve never read Ender’s Game nor is this a book I would’ve picked up for myself upon first glance.

Wow am I glad I got to read it.

The imagery is so vivid, I read well into a few nights because I just didn’t want to put the book down. The jumping POV gives a good scope of all the angles of the story and how the characters view one another. There is one POV I think hinders the story, as this specific character isn’t even in space with the rest of the cast. As someone who’s never read Ender’s Game, the references from this character don’t make sense to me and drag the momentum the book had.

The opening of the book is also a bit uncomfortable and that same theme is drawn out through the rest of the book and is another personal downside I have.

Other than those two things, I truly can say this book is worth the read for anyone who loves sci-fi. I grew attached to these characters and cried and mourned with them and their endeavors.

karl2847's review against another edition

4.0

Earth Unaware is an odd book because it feels somehow disjointed. Part of this could be because it now has a coauthor or maybe it's just because it's written to supplement a comic book series.

What I mean by disjointed is that none of it reaches its full potential, but it never quite falters either. Let me explain. The characters retain the complexity and memorable qualities normally found in Card's Ender series, and this is by far the best quality in the book. The characters are never wholly good or evil and they do things not for the sake of moving the story along, but because they have reasons to do so. They have motivations and feelings.

If there's one weak link in the characters, it would have to be Wit, not because he's underdeveloped, but simply because we get to see so little of him that we never really get a sense for who he is. In the context of this book alone, his parts of the story seem to have no connection with anything else, and this may be a problem for some readers. Most likely, his story will become more important and connect to the big picture in future novels of the prequel trilogy, so it wasn't a big deal for me. After all, the chapters with him are entertaining, even if they do seem a little out of place.

Another strength in the novel is the whole society of asteroid mining. This is fascinating and original, and it creates a memorable background.

Now the weak points. There are numerous typos throughout the novel, and although it's easy to figure out what was intended, I can't help but feel that the editors didn't take a good look at the book before sending it on. Every book has some typos, but the typos found here are found far too often. Another weak point is that the writing here seems far weaker than in the other books of the series, and some of the sentences don't feel like Card even wrote them.

There is one more thing that many will take as a weakness, but it didn't bother me. This being the first in the "First Formic War" series, you'd expect the war to actually start, and this book, although there is action in it, is more the events leading up to the war than the war itself. Take it as a weakness or not, I didn't mind.

In all, although it is not anywhere near as strong as previous novels in the Enderverse, Earth Unaware is an entertaining read, despite its shortcomings. I feel that it is worth a read.

rouver's review against another edition

2.0

While this book says it's by Orson Scott Card, I'm wondering if most of the writing was actually done by Aaron Johnston, who worked w/ Card while writing the comic book version of this story.

If you'll remember, I accidentally read book 2 of this series first. Since Card often starts strong but goes downhill in subsequent books, I was excited to read book 1...book 2 was excellent. Apparently Johnston has the opposite problem as Card. Thanks to Earth Unaware, I started disliking characters. This book was nearly POINTLESS. We had a slight glimpse of what is to become the one of the main characters (Rackham) & have to follow an elite military force through some of their games & exercises...which are utterly pointless. This is one gigantic book of backstory. The plot of the actual invasion of earth moves as fast as pitch. Honestly, unless you just want to have read every little detail about this storyline, SKIP THIS BOOK. Every important fact in this book is mentioned in book 2. Earth Unaware does not add any crucial or exciting information at all. How many times can I say 'pointless'?! It was such a disappointment.

This series had better end with book 3. If they start dragging it out a la Robert Jordan, I am seriously going to get pissed.