A Book A Week - Week 24: Earth Afire

This week's book:
   Earth Afire  by Orson Scott Card and Aaron Johnston

Grade: C

Meh.

Maybe this was my fault for picking up the middle volume in a trilogy, but this book just didn't do it for me.  I found it unremarkable in every way, not really fantastic, not horrible, more like Wednesday night sitcoms, just hitting the beats and keeping the core audience happy.

This plot is standard sci-fi stuff, there's an alien invasion and one guy is trying to tell the world about it but no one will listen.  And then the aliens come anyway and they're not nice at all and, for some reason, decide to kill everything on the planet.  If you're an American and you've watched TV or movies you've encountered this plot before.  The difference is the authors try to make it plausible using what we know about science today.  An admirable effort, but when writers try this usually they end up twisting themselves into knots trying to explain how their sci-fi stuff works.  These authors largely avoid that, the story isn't about the tech, it's about the people.

But that's the problem.  I know where they're going with this, it's plain on the page: most disasters in human history are the result of incompetence rather than malice, and one person with purpose can accomplish more than a directionless army.  I agree.  But that doesn't mean I want to spend 400+ pages reading the same thing over and over again.  And that's what this book is, the same situation over and over again.
    For instance, every main character has a bully.  And I don't mean that metaphorically, like they all have a nasty obstacle to overcome, I mean that each character literally has a bully, a bit-player character who picks on them and tries to keep them down.  Most of the time these bullies are part of the establishment, functionaries who - also quite literally - put themselves directly in opposition to the main characters.  The authors are not just making a point, they're hammering it home with a big ol' mallet, making sure you, the reader, get what they're trying to say.
   All the main characters see things much clearer than anyone else around them.  This is also standard sci-fi stuff... but all of them?  Each one?  Every time?  It's an epidemic of competence to combat the malaise of incompetence around them.  It's also not very believable.

Don't get me wrong, like I said, this book is not terrible.  There are even moments of suspense and drama and action.  When the characters aren't speaking the narrative is actually very taut, the description crisp, and the pacing great.
   But then the characters speak.  Whatever good will the authors built with their narrative all gets lost when the characters interact.  I couldn't find any difference between characters in their dialogue, if the parts hadn't been labelled I wouldn't have known which character was speaking.  And then there's that whole epidemic of competence idea again, which strains credulity, especially when, for instance, a wise-beyond-his-years little Chinese kid has adult-style conversations with a grown military officer.  I've known many, many eight-year-olds in my time - I spent nearly a year as one - and though they can be smart and perceptive, they're still eight years old.  Enjoying sci-fi requires a willing suspension of disbelief, and almost every dialogue exchange in this book violated that for me.

Now to my deep genre-specific critique, for the sci-fi nerds out there.  I haven't read much Orson Scot Card, just a few short stories and those were years ago.  However, this narrative feels very Heinlein-esque to me.  Or at least like it's trying to be.  Maybe it's the invasion part, or the military part, or the realistic-space-opera part.  But for me Card's efforts fall flat where Heinlein's didn't.  The difference, I think, is that Heinlein actually served in the military where Card never did.  It's like if I tried to write a detailed account of what being pregnant is like; I can certainly try to understand it but my narrative would never have the credibility or veracity of one written by a woman who's actually carried a child in her womb.  It's an object lesson for writers everwhere: stick to what you know.

If you're more of an action-oriented sci-fi reader, you'll like this book.  If your tastes are more character-driven I think you'll be disappointed.


Next week:
  No book next week, I have stuff to do that will prevent me from reading and reviewing.  I'll pick it up again the following week.