Orson Scott Card, and co-writer Aaron Johnston didn’t disapprove in his latest installment into the Enderverse, “Earth Unaware,” providing readers with an enthralling vision into a future where nations are dependent on interstellar mining that has turned outer-space into something very much like the Caribbean during the early years of European exploration. Beyond that, with this novel, the award-winning sci-fi author has started setting up the framework for “Ender’s Game” and Ender Wiggin’s war against the “buggers.”
Setting aside recent political controversy surrounding the author, he’s once again shown his true colors as a master of the science fiction genre in this recent novel. The awkwardly witty banter that’s become a trademark of the author is present, as is the perennial mystery surrounding the buggers, or, as we’re supposed to call them these days, the Formics.
The story starts off with Victor, who is stationed on the El Cavador ship, which is a ship composed of a group of Venezuelan families in the far-distant Kuiper Belt (which is located beyond Pluto, the planet that was). The ship discovers an object moving toward Earth at unheard-of speeds. Any reader of the Enderverse would know right away that these are the Formics and so they’re likely not surprised that the aliens decimate another group of mining ships ruthlessly.
Throw in corporate greed and a guy sent in a space capsule to the moon by himself for eight months, and you have a pretty good thriller — without mentioning an attack on the exceedingly formidable Formic spacecraft.
Readers of the series will also love the very brief mention of Mazer Rackham, who we know from “Ender’s Game” ends up being a hero of the early bugger wars. Newcomers to the series will enjoy the fast pace of the novel and the mystery surrounding the alien fleet and the inter-locking plot lines surrounding the different characters (most of the story-lines end up intersecting in this first volume of three, except for the one concerning the special forces unit back on Earth which is quite literally on a world apart from the rest of the story).
This article was originally published on AllMediaNY.com
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