Now they believe him, but is there anything the Earth can do about the invading Formics?
Earth Awakens
The First Formic War #3
by Orson Scott Card and Aaron Johnston
read by Stefan Rudnicki and cast
Tor Books / Macmillan Audio
June 2014
Lem Jukes works with Dr. Ben Yahweh to find a technological solution to the war. Mazer Rackham and the Mobile Operations Police operate in China trying to save as many humans as possible from the terraforming Formics. Victor Delgado looks to return to his family. Most of the Earth finds reasons and excuses not to take action. The question is how do you stop an invasion from a significantly technologically advanced civilization?
Since this is an Ender's Game novel and not a straight science fiction title the answer is, of course, yes. Some of the fixes are in-the-nick-of-time reroute-power solutions (ala Star Trek the Next Generation). Some are very implausible. But with books in this series you really don't mind as a reader. Most Ender fans are going to love the adventure and ignore the science or plausibility. And fans really should read this book. It fills in quite a bit of back story from the original series - so much so that you could and possibly should start with the First Formic War series rather than Ender's Game.
For fans of adventure and fun sci-fi yarns and the Ender books I highly recommend it.
A note about the audio book: This is the third book that a limited cast has read. No sound affects or music keeps this from being a full radio drama-like book. However, the different readers for Lem, Victor and the female leads helps move the story along in a creative and easier to differentiate way. My only complaint is that not all the main characters have their own readers and one character, Victor's mother, has her own reader where she only has a very small part. A couple more readers would have been preferred. What is here is great.
