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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Almost good, but certainly not in OSC's top form., December 22, 2010
This review is from: Empire (Tor Science Fiction) (Mass Market Paperback)
I will keep my review "fairly" brief, after scanning a number of the positive and negative reviews. I have no problem with the main characters having a conservative point of view. I do have a problem with the execution of the writing. As I pursue my own masters in creative writing, I am stunned by how Card violates some of his own advice from his two good books on writing (Character and Viewpoint; How to write science fiction). Whether you call this science fiction, or an espionage/thriller, it still has to be believable within the confines of the world he is building. It doesn't.
Card choses to build a world that is essentially "right now" and post 9-11. He populates it with people that actually exist (O'Reilly on FOX). If you do that, in broad brush strokes you are setting expectations that this is the world we live in right now and people would react as you have seen them recently react. They don't.
Card does a number of things that make this hard to swallow: 1) Major attack in and on New York City, where the entire nation still empathizes with the police and fire department (left or right politically) and has the revolutionary forces kill all uniformed people and the city then rolls over and embraces that group? This world? Today? Really? Embrace the killers of anyone in uniform? Then he basically ignores the entire situation for several months (elapsed novel time) and focuses strictly on the remaining protagonists? Card, what happened to "world building" as you discuss in your craft books? Yes, you wanted to keep it fast paced, but that much time elapses and we get close to zero feel for what is happening in the nation. A few blurbs about city council votes does not cut it!
The premise at its core could have worked. I have had two similar ideas boiling in my head for years...but if I ever approach the idea, I will look to this book as a list of things to avoid, not to emulate.
My concern (for Card's future) is that this book seems to have not been fully edited by a good set of critical editors. As authors become popular, this seems to occur frequently. Good and great authors still need to be told when something doesn't work and they need to not let their past success go to their head. I recently read a collection of Card's short stories, which included some LDS oriented stories. Despite the obvious political and religious leanings, those stories were quite good and the short essays that went with each story were insightful. But, most of those were written long ago.
Finally, as mentioned by a few, this also feels "video game-ish." I will probably not spend the time on the sequel to this, "Hidden Empire," as I suspect it will be in the same world and follow the same style. I don't begrudge Card the opportunity to get preachy, I just would like him to do a better job at it. Sometimes, when an author is too passionate about something s/he loses objectivity and the ability to self-edit. I think this may be the case for this book (and its sequel).
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35 of 45 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Those darn Liberals and their Mech Suits., October 20, 2010
This review is from: Empire (Tor Science Fiction) (Mass Market Paperback)
First off, I do give credit to Card for the subject matter. Having seen the frothing hate swing from Bush to Obama, I've started to wonder if some kind of civil war is our fate. That was my main reason for picking up this book from the library.
The problem with Card's take on the subject, is that he feels the answer to the problem is to accept Conservative ways and reject Liberalism.
Key points in the world of Empire
-99.99% of the armed services are noble and honorable Conservatives
-100% of Liberals loathe all members of the armed services
-Liberals are so ignorant and gullible (because they believe in things like global warming), that they would be easily manipulated into triggering a civil war
-Liberals are so inept at the art of fighting (since there are no Liberal soldiers, of course), that they would need to rely heavily on insanely advance technology to even come close to matching the skill and heroism of Conservatives, and yet they still lose, badly
-Conservative soldiers would pine and feel an intense burden at having to fire on fellow Americans, while Liberals would gleefully slaughter anyone standing in the way of their mad agenda, especially members of the armed services
-The heads of the Washington Post would openly discuss with the Conservative soldier, how they're intending to spin his story to the Left and smear him and the military, while Fox News takes great lengths to provide a truly balanced forum for unbias reporting
Card continued to imply thoughtout the book that both sides were to blame, and a lot of people giving this a 5 star review say we missed that point. To them I ask, find me one Conservative villian in this book. Liberal bad guys were everywhere:
-The staff of the Washington Post
-The main character's secretary
-The general pretending to be a Conservative, and threatening a coup, to make Conservatives look bad
-The soldiers and Mech drivers who invade New York
-Canada (they encourage us to accept the Liberal takeover)
I can't think of one single Conservative bad guy in the book. In fact, the only good Liberal in the book is the wife of the main character, and she's really the Colmes to every other character's Hannity. Her purpose there is to show that a truly wise Liberal would know deep down that Conservatives are right about everything. That doesn't scream 'non-bias' to me.
Card's very obvious tilt toward the Right aside, the story is so horrible as it is.
Mech suits and hoverbikes?
Seriously, mech suits and hoverbikes?
.......
Really?
The whole concept of the book, with the 'neutral' character manipulating his way to being the unopposed candidate for president is laughable. You're writing a story about the division between our politics, and you think, even after a civil war, both sides would start falling all over themselves to work together to ensure that the same guy gets elected president
Plus, the Mech suits and hoverbikes, never forget them.
All said, one of the worst written stories I've ever read.
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82 of 111 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Barely recognizable as OSC., September 28, 2007
I don't mean to scathe an author I have for so long respected, but given my reaction to this book I don't see how I can do otherwise. On one hand, plot mechanics and the language of the book are blatantly recycled from his Ender series. The obsession with the word "jeesh" and certain actions with .22 pistols are laughable distractions for anyone who's read any other OSC.
The other hand, the more important hand to me, is that Card's language throughout is blatantly offensive to my value system. Card and I have opposite sociopolitical views, which I have known for a long time. That said, I have respected him for years because he always argued his value system in a way that I respect. From reading Card's work in the past, I was able to understand and sympathize with Conservative viewpoints. That said, he abandoned his intellectual approach in this book in favor of cheap shots barely worthy of best seller of the week pulp novels. I had to check the cover every few minutes to make sure it was still an Orson Scott Card book.
The only entertaining parts of the book, which ends in a total fizzle, are the action sequences... which are practically written to go straight to a movie. It's strange, the moment the book goes to an action sequence bizarre sci-fi machines come out of the woodwork. Nothing believable ever happens in the entire book, and the action sequences only serve to drop the credibility of the story.
I don't recognize this author as the man who wrote Ender's Game or Xenocide, two of my favorite books. He spends too much time taking cheap shots at modern pop culture, giving responsibility for a bloody and amoral civil war on absurdly single-minded "progressives" (the word "Progressive" is used in a derogatory fashion the whole book) who are bitter about Gore's loss in 2000, and championing the military much in the style of the Transformers movie to make this anything but a cartoonish joke of a novel. The occasional efforts to lighten this radical right wing blitzkrieg with assertions of right wing wrongdoing are pitiful and forced, quite patronizing.
I have nothing against people of different political persuasions, nothing that would cause me to wish extreme violence upon them, and I know no one who does... on either side of the aisle. This is not about my views as a left leaning American, this is about my views as a human. I'm ashamed of Card right now.
Really, I could go on and on, but I'd rather not. Mr. Card, I expected so much better from you. I'm actually a good bit sad right now.
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