The sections that feature highly intelligent, self-reliant children--Card's trademark--are as excellent as ever; elsewhere there's plenty of solid action, well-developed characters....Another solidly engrossing installment, where the aliens are really just a sideshow: What we're witnessing is how and why Ender's child armies came to be.

- KIRKUS REVIEWS on EARTH FIRE,

While the reader knows who wins the war, the fate of the engaging characters in this story is up in the air. Thirty-five years after he introduced Ender to the world, it's great to see that Orson Scott Card is still making magic in this imaginative world.

- NY JOURNALS OF BOOKS on EARTH AFIRE,

The pacing and the vivid action scenes will satisfy hard-core military-SF buffs. At the same time, the characters and the ethical foundations under them are at the high level we have come to associate with Card. Laying their own foundations under Card's Ender Wiggins saga, the Formic Wars promise to add to Card's already high reputation and to his collaborator's as well.

- BOOKLIST, starred review on EARTH AFIRE,

Card and Johnston explore human ignorance and compassion through a tapestry of galactic warfare in the second volume of the Formic Wars trilogy.... Social upheavals and political ineptitude are realized through rich characterization and brisk action.

- PUBLISHERS WEEKLY on EARTH AFIRE,