007. Earth Unware
Earth Unaware, Orson Scott Card
(O hay, I've been neglecting my blog again. Can't believe I'm still at #7; I'm sure I've been reading more than that these few months. I'll post a series of reflections these few days, then -- I'm trying to work myself up to writing a proper Travel Post for my Hanoi trip.)
Earth Unaware is the prequel to Ender's Game, of which we are very excited about the upcoming movie adaptation starring the delightfully creepy Asa Butterfield as Ender Wiggin, Harrison Ford as Colonel Graff, and Ben Kingsley as Mazer Rackham. Alright, as with all adaptations, there's also a sense of dread, but Battle Room looks gorgeous in the the trailer (which is pretty darn spoilery, but I guess people who haven't read the book won't get it):
The enemy's gate is down, oh yeah.
Since we're talking about the prequel here, only Mazer Rackham is of relevance because the book covers the first Formic War, or more specifically, the first encounter humanity has with the alien insectoid species that became known as the Formics. He doesn't even play that much of a role here; instead the book introduces a new cast of characters and it really seems to be setting the stage for something else to happen rather than being a standalone novel like Ender's Game. Meaning that nothing much happens. I also thoroughly dislike the new characters, so my view is that the book isn't fantastic at all.
I suppose part of it is because the Enderverse was conceived as YA fiction, with the teenage characters being endowed with excessive maturity and insight and the adults acting like children. Reading it as a teenager, you feel that WOW, THIS REALLY RESONATES WITH MY EXPERIENCES (think Capslock!Harry). As someone who has hopefully moved on from stage of life, there's a bit of dissonance -- I'm not proud of how I saw the world as when I was that age, and I know now that authority figures fully deserve our sympathies too rather than being the easy target for adolescent angst. Thusly, the main characters Victor Delgado (genius teenage mechanic whose adult shipmates don't think highly of him, oh no) and Lem Jukes (grown man in his thirties who still has lingering daddy issues) are not appealing protagonists. Add on to Card's usual habit of assigning reductionist racial stereotypes to all his characters -- it annoys me hugely that Victor Delgado's ship is so very, very Hispanic, from the the lingo to the emphasis on family and community over self to rigidity of gender roles; you would've thought that cultures in the future were less exclusive and more mixed -- it makes me feel pretty strongly against them.
This also is the reason why I'll keep on reading this new series anyway. Because Card can draw such strong reactions from us, because I still want to find out if these characters stop being so idiotic, dammit. And above all, because Ender's Game did touch me at a certain point in my life. Once, I fell in love with the Enderverse, and I guess there's no going back, eh? I've changed, the quality of writing may be inconsistent, but that doesn't change the fact that back then, I was moved by the story of a group of young people who had to cope with all the pressures that the world threw at them, and was able to make a real difference in spite of it all.