Story: 7.5 / 10
Characters: 7
Setting: 7
Prose: 7 ( )

Oh man! What a place to end this book! So glad I’ve already downloaded the next one!

Great story, and great performance on the audiobook version, available on Audible.com.

With my car dead, I haven’t had as much time to listen to audiobooks, so it’s taken me quite awhile to finish this one: 2 months! ( )

I (typically) really enjoy Orson Scott Card's work. I did not enjoy this book. It was work to get through. I see now as I am writing a review that it was written jointly with some fellow named Aaron Johnston... well... that might explain it. This is not typical Card, other than the focus on the boy-genius who can save the world (a usual Card protagonist).... the story is whiny, the characters non-distinct and the plot... really doesn't go anywhere. It is also a full-on cliff hanger (assuming you can make it to the end of the book, it is definitely a struggle to do so, and there is no reward that makes it worth the slog).

The narration is not very good either - they alternate readers, but not based on characters or plot, just randomly. One of them places emphasis at very odd points. Overall, very disappointing - story was boring AND it had an abrupt ending. (I know I previously called it a cliff hanger, but that would imply there was some suspense that would make you buy the next one... there is no suspense, the story just stops mid-stroke and there is no resolution) - I guess you have to buy the next book to see how it ends, but usually I expect books (even those trying to develop cliff hanger suspense) to have a beginning, a middle and an end. This had a middle. ( )

Cien años antes de que Ender naciera, una raza extraterrestre llegó a la Tierra armada con fuego y muerte.
Después del ataque que sufre la nave minera Cavadora, Victor Delgado escapa y se une al Oficial del Estado Imalapara alertar a los científicos de la Tierra de la peligrosidad de los hostiles insectos llamados fórmicos. Mientras los diplomáticos buscan una solución pacífica, Lem Jukes, hijo del magnate Ukko Jukes, planea un ataque que supone un desafío en toda regla a su padre.
Con este telón de fondo y una horda invasora planeando a través de la llanura china sobre campos devastados, será el sublime y heróico Mazer Rackham, un oficial de operaciones maorí, quien luche para convertir a su tropa en una fuerza capaz de preservar la Tierra en la que será su primera guerra interestelar.

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Title: Earth Afire
Series: Enderverse: First Formic War #2
Authors: Orson Card & Aaron Johnston
Rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Genre: SF
Pages: 373
Words: 148K

Synopsis:

From Wikipedia.org

A century before the events of Ender's Game, an alien spaceship enters the solar system and soon makes known its hostile intentions by destroying harmless human ships. Then, it wipes out a ragtag fleet of asteroid miners who have banded together in a desperate attempt to stop it. All of the adult male members of Victor Delgado's extended clan die in the battle. The survivors are unable to transmit a warning, so Victor volunteers for a near-suicidal mission to try to reach Earth in a tiny, hastily converted unmanned cargo ship. He makes it to the Moon, but is unable to get the authorities to take him seriously. Thus, humanity is totally unprepared when the First Formic War starts.

The invader sends three enormous landing craft to southeast China. The Formics emerge and use gas to defoliate the area and kill everyone. Despite suffering stupendous losses, the suspicious Chinese government refuses outside help.

Before the landing, Mazer Rackham had been training the Chinese military on a new transport aircraft, the HERC, in exchange for training on their new invention, drill sledges that can tunnel quickly underground. During the Formic invasion, he saves Bingwen, a very intelligent eight-year-old Chinese boy, but is then shot down. Bingwen saves his life, with the remote help of Mazer's romantic interest, Kim. Bingwen and Mazer then set off to destroy the nearest Formic lander.

The Mobile Operations Police (MOP), a small but elite international force, enters China (without official authorization). The MOPs save Bingwen and Mazer from a Formic attack. The lander is heavily shielded, but it does not extend underground. Mazer manages to find some drill sledges and HERCs to transport them close to the lander. MOP Captain Wit O'Toole obtains a tactical nuclear weapon from anonymous Chinese who do not agree with their government's stance on foreign assistance. They destroy the lander, but then Captain Shenzu arrives and places Mazer under arrest.

Meanwhile, Victor and Imala (a Customs Agent assigned to Victor upon his unauthorized arrival) manage to drift close to the Formic ship, using a disguised ship provided by Lem Jukes (the only son of the richest man alive) to avoid being destroyed. Victor breaks into the alien ship through a gun port.

My Thoughts:

I enjoyed the first book, Earth Unaware, so much that I broke my usual way of reading and dived immediately into this the second book in the First Formic War trilogy. This was another really good entry but for whatever reason I didn't enjoy it quite as much, hence the halfstar knocked off.

Part of it is that the Lem and his father Ukko Jukes thing got tiresome. Lem lives and breathes everything through the lens of thinking his father is out to test him. He's paranoid about it, to the point where it got on my nerves. Then Ukko will go and do something to justify everything Lem has thought. That was just as frustrating, if not more so, to read about.

A lot of the action takes place in China. I rather enjoyed these sections and found the boy Bingwen to be an Ender-prototype. He was smart and intelligent and didn't act like a baby. While many of the adults around him were panicking he was trying to figure out ways to fix whatever the problem was. He was not a superhuman, but Card definitely has a thing for writing very intelligent young people (Ender or Rigg from the Pathfinder trilogy). Bingwen also brought a very human touch to the story. His adventures as an 8year old getting beat up, trying to take special tests to get ahead and then his parents dying, taking care of his aged grandfather, it was all SO human. Mazer Rackham is the military look, Victor and Imala are the political look and Bingwen is the purely everyman look.

I liked how all the threads were woven together in this story. There were no obvious demarcations between Card and Johnston, to the point where I wonder if Johnston did most of the writing with Card supplying the ideas. It doesn't really matter though, as it was a good tight story.

★★★★☆ ( )