Earth Unaware

By: Orson Scott Card, Aaron Johnston

Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki, Stephen Hoye, Arthur Morey, Vikas Adam, Emily Janice Card, Gabrielle de Cuir, Roxanne Hernandez

Length: 13 hrs and 59 mins

Publisher's summary

A hundred years before Ender's Game, humans thought they were alone in the galaxy. Humanity was slowly making their way out from Earth to the planets and asteroids of the Solar System, exploring and mining and founding colonies.

The mining ship El Cavador is far out from Earth, in the deeps of the Kuiper Belt, beyond Pluto. Other mining ships, and the families that live on them, are few and far between this far out. So when El Cavador's telescopes pick up a fast-moving object coming in-system, it's hard to know what to make of it. It's massive and moving at a significant fraction of the speed of light.

But the ship has other problems. Their systems are old and failing. The family is getting too big. There are claim-jumping corporates bringing Asteroid Belt tactics to the Kuiper Belt. Worrying about a distant object that might or might not be an alien ship seems…not important.

They're wrong. It's the most important thing that has happened to the human race in a million years. This is humanity's first contact with an alien race. The First Formic War is about to begin.
Earth Unaware is the first novel in The First Formic War series by Orson Scott Card and Aaron Johnston.

©2012 Orson Scott Card and Aaron Johnston (P)2012 Macmillan Audio

Critic reviews

“The somber basso voice of Stefan Rudnicki and two well-chosen players march through the story, with a young man's voice particularly effective in segments featuring the angst-ridden teenager. This is an outstanding job, with more to come.” —AudioFile Magazine

“As the narration passes from character to character, the talented cast... easily keeps listeners intrigued with skillful characterizations that feature unique voices, accents, and dialects. And by the time the huge alien ship arrives and the story kicks into high gear, listeners will be utterly captivated by this exciting adventure.” —Publishers Weekly

Phenomenal

Just enough tid-bits from enders game to tie them together and pull in those wanting from Ender Wiggins, but far enough apart to be its own story. Worth the credit.

Excellent

Orson Scott Card writes Sci-Fi that is easy to get into and hard to put down, this is no exception.

The only thing I found strange was how the story treated absolute velocity as if it meant much to ships in space. Relative velocity is much more important.

Liked it better than Enders

Blew me away how great this book was. I was more captivated by it than I was by ender's game.

Good addition to the saga

Overall I enjoyed the book. It'll make an interesting addition to the Enderverse after the other books are written. It is a little formulaic for OSC, since one of the main characters is a child genius, but that's to be expected.

Please re-record this great story!

Great writing, but the multitude of narrators was jarring and didn’t always follow the storyline.

Prequel to the Enders Series

What made the experience of listening to Earth Unaware the most enjoyable?

If you a re familiar with the Enders series this is essentially a prequel to those novels. It follows the first war, in which Mazer Rackham takes it to the buggers! The story is great, and is really completely separate from the Enders series... this first book was setting up the story for the next two, which I'm really looking forward to now! The full cast production makes the audiobook much more engrossing. I loved it!

What other book might you compare Earth Unaware to and why?

Enders Game, Enders Shadow, Shadow of the Hegemon

If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?

Before Ender... there was Mazer

A worthy addition to the Ender universe

This is a gripping book. I listened to it as quickly as I was able over a couple of days, even slipping in a minute here and there on the clock at work when my manager wasn't looking.

The narrators did a fine job. I would hear the characters as real people. They drew me more into the story.

What I like most about the book was its utter feel of realism. It doesn't have a cinematic feel to it, making it far more unpredictable. I recommend this book to anybody who will listen.

Narration and content

Performed well and enjoyed the whole book.Orson Card is a favorite author. Well done and enjoyable

An awesome start to the series.

A must-read for everyone. A very well-thought-out story with well-developed characters. It has great characters—good, bad, and everything in between. If you want diversity, you don’t get much more diverse in ethnicity, religion, thought, and morality. None of it is forced or feels fake. It all naturally fits into place.

Great Book!

I really enjoyed this book! I should start by stating that I am an Orson Scott Card fan and have reall ALL of his books. I read several reviews stating that this book ended abruptly...and I guess it kind of did, but it isn't like it ended in the middle of a sentence or anything. It was an intro book to a series and ended much like many of Orson Scott Card's series books do. As a fan of the enderverse I really liked reading (listening) to this book. You do not have to have read any of the other enderverse books to understand this one...but I think it would be more enjoyable if you had.

Regarding the book itself...just like all the others it has an allstar cast/performance with the character development that I have grown to love in Card's works. This book tells the story about the lead up to the first formic war. Mazor makes a small appearance but mainly as a namesake...forshadowing that he will play a bigger role in the following books. I for one liked the book and am anxiously anticipating the next one.