Earth Unaware Review

Title: “Earth Unaware, The First Formic War”
Author: Orson Scott Card
Pages: 352 (hard cover)
Genre: Sci-Fi
Rating: 3/5 stars

This book is science fiction because it takes place in a futuristic world where half the human population is born and spends their life on spaceships. Many of these ships spend long and uneventful months docked onto asteroids mining them for their resources. On board El Cavador, a mining spaceship, lives a teenage boy named Victor. Though he is only a teenager, the crew looks to him as their best engineer and a great leader. Throughout the novel, Victor is continuously put into dangerous situations and forced to make difficult choices that will permanently affect his life.

One day while Edimar, Victor's cousin, is on watch, she spots an unknown spaceships traveling at a speed no human technology could possibly reach. This sends a wave of panic throughout the ship, putting the ship's council in a awkward situation. They decided that the ship would stay put, but little did they know about another rising conflict. On board the Marhku, Lem Jukes and the crew have been looking for a space to test their “glaser.” Lem Jukes and his crew come up with a plan to get El Cavador off of the asteroid belt. During the raid the Marhku accidentally kills Victor’s uncle and disables the ship’s power and communication. It is now Victor’s responsibility to get the ship running, so they can reach the Italian ships. Victor is now realizing that he is going to have to become leader in order to save himself and the rest of the world. When they see the damage the alien ships have done, Victor volunteers himself to go on a seven month journey to Luna. All along, Victor is making choices and risking his life for the good of other people. Even in some of the most dangerous situations he continues to help as many people as he can. Helping people no matter the situation will lead to better things for yourself. This is a theme of this book because Victor continuously helps people out, and he ends up on Earth with a better life. He is locked up on a tiny ship for seven months just to warn the planet about the aliens coming. He could have easily been killed, but he persevered because he knew the world needed to know the aliens were coming.

I both like and disliked this book at times. I thought that it was slow and boring at times. Something I did like was the main character, Victor. In many ways he was similar to Ender Wiggin who I really liked. Another thing I found interesting was how the author made three completely different perspectives and then he brought them all together. In many ways it was like Ender’s’ Game, and I would recommend it to anyone who likes science fiction, and anyone who like Ender's Game would enjoy this book.

Contributed by: Nick Stiebler