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

Orson does it again

And maybe Aaron had a little help as well! More words to finish audibles stupid word limit and submit it.

Absolutely wonderful

I absolutely loved this story. The characters, suspense, storyline - everything. I have not read the Enders series. I have only seen the movie, but it got me interested enough to look into the books and I found this prequel series. I'm so glad!

I don't really like all the different readers, though. I don't know why it annoyed me but it did. The story was good enough for me to overlook that annoyance though!

Good Story

Where does Earth Unaware rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

top 10%

What did you like best about this story?

It's a new twist on the Alien Invasion theme

Have you listened to any of the narrators’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

I don't think I've heard this narrator before. He's not bad most of the time, but he can get overly excited at times. I don't really care for narrators that think a story needs embellishment with added by the narrator.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

no

Any additional comments?

An excellent story by Card. I just hope he can resist the temptation to serialize it. It is a cliffhanger but, Card has supplied all we need to supply our own finish.

best series

great writing as usual, really engaging and keeps you wanting more. nice addition of multiple narrator's.

A new Ender universe story.

I've never read the Ender universe books but have always appreciated what I heard about them. This new series is full of characters to love and gripping stories to terrify you. very little is predictable. keeps you entertained till the last word

Interesting story about space miners

Gets right into the lives of space miners. Good character development.

Prequel to Ender, but doesn't relate to much... just happens to be set as the aliens arrive but mostly a story about the miners themselves.

Too many narrators.

With this many narrators you would think that the caracter voices would be consistent. You would be wrong, multiple readers reading the same characters leaves the audience confused.

Great Book

I had a little bit of a hard time getting into this one at first, but after the first two or three chapters the pace picked up and never looked back. It's a fun/bumpy ride, from the outer reaches of the solar system all the way back to Earth.

A fantastic start to an amazing series

I read Enders Game as a kid, and loved every bit of it. As an adult, I've been going through all of Orson Scott Cards books in this universe. He is hands down, one of my favorite authors. I appreciated this book because it had am extremely realistic approach to technology of the not too distant future. I'm someone who does has to be completely convinced of the logic of something in fiction to be able to enjoy it. That's something Card is very good at; convincing his audience of the logic of his world.

Riveting

I haven’t read Enders game, and I have read classic sci fi extensively from Jules Verne to Ilium. I was a little hesitant after reading negative reviews complaining that this was filler. Nothing could be further from the reality of the universe conjured here.

This book gripped my attention, building suspense, with plausible science and easy to understand. The characters were deep and sculpted with detail. The narrators were professional, each handling many voices skillfully, and capturing the emotional arcs of many characters. This telling accompanied me on several long hikes, hanging up clothes, and doing kitchen duty. I am on to the next book in the series.