Wednesday, July 03, 2013

Earth Afire (2013)

Earth Afire. Orson Scott Card and Aaron Johnston. (The First Formic War) 2013. Tor. 400 pages. [Source: Library]

Earth Afire is the sequel to Earth Unaware. I described the first book as something to be experienced instead of (merely) read. The second book is similar. It almost is too much of an experience to be considered enjoyable. It is so intense and so raw.

It is told from multiple view points: Bingwen (a young, intelligent Chinese boy who BELIEVES the vids posted about the aliens are real), Mazer (who is transferred along with his team from New Zealand to China), Victor (who risked it all to reach Luna in time to warn Earth and has sadly been disbelieved for the most part) Rena (Victor's mother who is tasked with keeping the women and children of El Calvador together no matter what), and Lem Jukes (who has changed so much since book one; he's now on a mission to stop the aliens). The aliens are coming--coming quickly. A handful of people know the truth, know the danger, it is just a matter of convincing people that it IS true and that SOMETHING should be done. Sound easy? It's not. For there are so many people--politicians, business men, and military leaders--who do NOT want to face reality that they will do anything to stop the truth from being believed and acted upon.

By the halfway point, the aliens are undeniably here and hostile. What will Earth do? Will there be a fractured effort to stop the aliens? Will the governments on Earth ever learn to work together? Can the aliens even be stopped?

I definitely felt this one. I cared about the characters and the story. My favorite new character was definitely Bingwen, those sections were something. I loved getting the chance to know Mazer Rackham better.

© 2013 Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews

1 comment:

Seth said...

I almost completely forgot about the parts with Rena and the Crows, but realized upon listening to the audio version that I quite liked those parts even though they didn't add really anything to the overall story. I suspect we'll see a payoff from that storyline in book three. (Then again, OSC still has a few dangling subplots in the Speaker series, so who knows?)