The Swarm: The Second Formic War (Volume 1)

Orson Scott Card · Aaron Johnston

Aug 2016 · The Second Formic War Book 1 · Sold by Tor Books

About this ebook

Orson Scott Card and Aaron Johnston return to their Ender's Game prequel series with this first volume of an all-new trilogy about the Second Formic War in The Swarm.

The first invasion of Earth was beaten back by a coalition of corporate and international military forces, and the Chinese army. China has been devastated by the Formic's initial efforts to eradicate Earth life forms and prepare the ground for their own settlement. The Scouring of China struck fear into the other nations of the planet; that fear blossomed into drastic action when scientists determined that the single ship that wreaked such damage was merely a scout ship.

There is a mothership out beyond the Solar System's Kuiper Belt, and it's heading into the system, unstoppable by any weapons that Earth can muster.

Earth has been reorganized for defense. There is now a Hegemon, a planetary official responsible for keeping all the formerly warring nations in line. There's a Polemarch, responsible for organizing all the military forces of the planet into the new International Fleet. But there is an enemy within, an enemy as old as human warfare: ambition and politics. Greed and self-interest. Will Bingwen, Mazer Rackam, Victor Delgado and Lem Juke be able to divert those very human enemies in time to create a weapon that can effectively defend humanity in the inexorable Second Formic War?

THE ENDER UNIVERSE

Ender series
Ender’s Game / Speaker for the Dead / Xenocide / Children of the Mind / Ender in Exile / Children of the Fleet

Ender’s Shadow series
Ender’s Shadow / Shadow of the Hegemon / Shadow Puppets / Shadow of the Giant / Shadows in Flight

The First Formic War (with Aaron Johnston)
Earth Unaware / Earth Afire / Earth Awakens

The Second Formic War (with Aaron Johnston)
The Swarm / The Hive

Ender novellas
A War of Gifts / First Meetings

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Ratings and reviews

While I enjoyed his books, bought second hand, now having found out what a racist fascist neanderthal this man is, I will not be buying them. " are they any LGBTQ ppl here?" This was his excuse for the last series of negation ; " So Card has issued a statement to Entertainment Weekly repudiating the boycott, saying, “Ender’s Game is set more than a century in the future and has nothing to do with political issues that did not exist when the book was written in 1984.” After thus establishing that gay rights did not exist in 1984—gay people not having been invented until that one episode of thirtysomething... " Just thought you should know.

This reads like an Orson Scott Card book. Like many of his other entries into the enderverse but this goes past and delves deeper than any of those previous entries. The back story of that world and all of the people that contributed to it. This sets up and creates a world that has more political and ideological differences and theories that make this so much more sophiscated than any of his other books I've read. I love it and can't wait for the next entry.

Love the Ender series! They can't pump them out fast enough. I wonder when the next Bean story about his kids will come out.

About the author

ORSON SCOTT CARD is the author of the international bestsellers Shadow of the Giant, Shadow Puppets, Shadow of the Hegemon, and Ender's Shadow, and of the beloved classic of science fiction, Ender's Game, as well as the acclaimed fantasy series The Tales of Alvin Maker. He lives in Greensboro, North Carolina.

AARON JOHNSTON is an advertising specialist, and was the co-author, with Orson Scott Card, of the contemporary SF thriller Invasive Procedures. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and son.