Earth Awakens

This is the third in the First Formic War trilogy. It's really the third installment in a very long three part novel. It's fast moving, exiting, a fun entertaining read; not great literature, but it is well written. I read the first book, Earth Unaware, quite some time ago and a lot of the details had faded. I read the second, Earth Afire, immediately before reading Earth Awakens - that's the right way to do it.

This trilogy is a prequel to Ender's Game. Mazur Rackham, an important character in Ender's Game, is introduced in the first of these three books and plays a major role in the second two. There are a number of story tracks running simultaneously. His is one. As the story progresses, all the story tracks converge. Rackham is one of the primary heroes responsible for the defeat of the formics.

In Ender's Game, Rackham is a hero for having single handedly destroyed the formics many years earlier. But the way he did it then, isn't the way it happened in this trilogy, the first formic war. I had vaguely remembered from Ender's Game, that there had been two prior formic wars. And so there was. The end of Earth Awakens sets the stage for the next formic invasion. The IF (International Fleet) and the Hegemony have been established. (In Ender's Game, Ender is drafted by the IF, and later in the Ender series, in Speaker for the Dead, Ender's sociopathic older brother, Peter, becomes the Hegemon.) So, I knew that there must be more prequel to come, and sure enough Card and Johnston have written the first in a trilogy based on the second formic war - The Swarm. As far as I can tell, it will be published later this year. I'll wait till all three are available before is start it, but I do expect to read it. I guess I'm hooked