Customer Reviews

Empire (Tor Science Fiction)

5 star:		(47)
4 star:		(39)
3 star:		(35)
2 star:		(40)
1 star:		(92)

 

 

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).

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.

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.

Ender's game is one of the great science fiction novels. It's characters are well-rounded and the society Ender lives in gradually unfolds as we see him react to it.

The somewhat lurid cover of Empire--and Card's name--led me to pick the book up from the new books section of my local Barnes and Noble. I really looked forward to several enjoyable hours in Card's universe, thinking, perhaps, that it was a prequel to the Ender novels.

I always give a science fiction author my willing suspension of disbelief when I start a story. To do less is to imply that I already know all about the story line. But this participation by me as a reader is fragile, and depends on the skill of the author and of me as an educated reader to keep alive.

Sadly, that belief died an excruciating death during the first few chapters, and never recovered. Card has complained that Empire is viewed as good or bad depending on the political views of the reader. That may be the case but as an independent voter, leaning toward Libertarian, I am not wedded to either the far right nor the far left. I find them both equally odious.

I enjoy Atlas Shrugged as well as more liberal stories such as Brave New World (liberal in the classic sense that the state knows best). In Empire, Card tries to paint both sides as evil, with the liberals in the most evil column and the conservatives in the "maybe-a-little-evil" position.

Fine. I can live with this when it is skillfully woven into a story line. I didn't see that in Empire. CNN = bad. FOX = good. Red states = good. Blue states = bad. Again, if it is a given, I can accept that in a story. But Card seems to have forgotten that editorializing through characters is a thin film to base a book on.

There are other problems with Empire, such as the unexpected and unsupported actions of various characters. Without giving anything away, an example is "minor character stepping out of place to affect major character and then being tossed aside". Sure, people can act irrationally, but if they do so in a story, more than a couple of paragraphs are needed to explain their actions. If not, the action reeks of Deus ex machina. Worse, this problem occurs several times during the novel.

Empire must reflect the views of the author, else it would be a story and not an apologia. In the end, it robs the reader of money and time, supplies little entertainment, and illustrates how a writer--any writer--can fail when stepping outside their expertise as a story teller.

Empire is a great disappointment. Do yourself a favor and don't let it be one to you, too. Think fondly of the Ender saga and hope the next book returns to Mr. Card's otherwise excellent output. Harry Turtledove could have handled the story very nicely, but then I wouldn't have the chance to complain about Mr. Card's amateurish venture.

I tried four times to read this novel and finally tossed it aside. Having visited Card's website I knew well his political viewpoints, but an author's politics have never stopped me from reading and enjoying a good story (at least in the fiction genre; non-fiction is a different story). But it's not really the political viewpoint expressed in the novel that turned me off; it was the one-dimensional, derivative characters and poorly-developed plot. I've enjoyed most of Card's science fiction and fantasy novels, and you would have to have your head in the sand to miss the politics that are woven through some of then, but a good story is a good story. That's the problem with Empire: it's just not a good story. That's also Card's problem these days: he can't seem to write a good story anymore.

I'm a big fan of Orson Scott Card's sci-fi novels, but felt that I wasted my money on EMPIRE.

Put simply, this novel has a remarkably silly plot and poorly developed characters. Most of the dialogue in this novel is stilted, hokey and unbelievable. The characters merely serve as devices to promote Card's own opinions about the American political scene. As a result, there was never a moment in this book when I felt excited or involved with what was going on. This novel had an intriguing premise, but Card fails miserably in executing it in a manner that truly engages the reader.

Whatever you think of Card's political beliefs, I don't believe they justify poor storytelling. I must admit being rather stunned by the poor writing in this book, given Card's brilliance in novels such as ENDER'S GAME. If you've never read Card before, my advice is to avoid EMPIRE and start with his early science fiction work.

I'm not totally unsympathetic to Card's political views, and I enjoyed reading about them in the afterword to EMPIRE, which is actually better than the novel itself. But if you're looking for a novelist with a right-of-center view that writes political thrillers, you might want to consider writers such as Vince Flynn or Brad Thor, who tell far better stories than what I found here.

I looked forward to Orson Scott Card's novel EMPIRE,since I'm a huge fan of his ENDER'S GAME and ENDER'S SHADOW series as well as THE FOLK ON THE FRINGE.Unfortunately this book was written almost as a big budget action movie,any holes in the plot or characters will be carried along by breathless chases and loud explosions and a James Bond villain with his own secret hideout. There were glimpses of brilliance here,and I was expecting a little more than a Twilight's Last Gleaming or Seven Days In May Right Wing Military coup. ***SPOILER ALERT*** The technology that the villains trot out when they take over Manhattan (I refuse to even comment on that,)was completely ludicrous and unnecessary to the story.
The idea of circles within circles and an Augustus like character were good ideas,but the whole red state/blue state conflict was simple minded and not fleshed out at all.I wish Mr.Card would rethink the idea of a Yugoslavia-like US Civil War because I think he had the makings of a great story there,but I don't think this was it.I wish he had read Robert Kaplan's THE COMING ANARCHY as preparation.

How far, far away from the genius of Ender's Game has Orson Scott Card come? This novel is, essentially, a reactonary screed against liberals. Which, depending on your political orientation, may delight or infuriate you. What is truly disappointing, however, is that the novel is poorly written, that its characters are all one-dimensional, and that the plot veers wildly and makes little sense. All in all, it's hard for me to reconcile the fact that an author capable of creating a work of genius such as Ender's Game could put his name on something as abysmally pathetic as this book. Most of the comments in this thread focus on the author's transparent political leanings. They should really focus on the fact that this is simply an awful novel. Don't waste your money, or more importantly you time, with this steaming pile.

Let me begin by saying that I am a big fan of Orson Scott Card. His books are thought-provoking, intelligent, and insightful.

This is precisely what leads me to conclude that Card could not have written this book. It's just bad. The author understands little about politics, the media, or even religion. This was written by some right-wing hack who flunked out of the English department at Princeton, and thinks it was because of a liberal conspiracy, rather than because of his lack of ability to write or think.

The portrayal of Islam is straight out of the Fox News handbook, and bears no resemblance to the balanced way Card has treated other religious views in his writing. Card's complex understanding of the nature of power (see Ender's Game) is nowhere evidenced in this book. This is much more Ann Coulter than Card.

Card has shown in past books to be a good writer; he could tell a good story and, in general, an authors political/social views don't stop me from reading their work.
Yet this book is such a poorly written screed with unbelievably silly plot, terrible characterisations (caricaturisation?) and downright bizarre interludes (the obsession of one character with the phonetic closeness of teacher and treachery for example); littered with instances of minor characters acting as thinly disguised Deus ex machina;
and as for what passes as dialogue in the novel, well stilted is being kind. More wooden than Babylon 5 is probably a better description of Cards' preaching.
Whole plot lines in the book disappear and are then ignored as though they never existed. To add to his literary failings Card even indulges in a little "Mary Sue" by writing himself into the book, as Averell Torrent (the academic who foretold the events described in the book), thus highlighting the comparison of this book to poor fan fiction.
As another reviewer puts it:
"It's almost as though there are two guys with the same name. One guy writes terrific science fiction; carefully thought out, nice characterization, good plot, nifty moral/ethical nuances. Then there's this other guy with the same name that's taking his first shot at an airport-rack adventure thriller."

Despite his stated political neutrality (he tries to paint both sides as evil, with the liberals in the most evil column and the conservatives in the "maybe-a-little-evil" position) Card indulges in every right wing stereotype......
CNN = bad.
FOX = good.
Red states = good.
Blue states = bad
Conservative = strong
Liberal = weak
Clinton(s) = bad, anti-military liberals
Bush(es) = good, brilliant leaders
...with no sense of equality of views between right and left. Card himself uses terms like
"liberal media elite" without even a touch of irony.


Card's opposition for gun control (automatic weapons and grenades might be needed to stop the army of liberals in use super-powered mechs) and support for US domestic espionage (hey, we need to keep tabs on liberal scientists and rabble-rousers who could be assembling a secret army...........) are actually moderate compared to his downright silly equating of Al Gore to the Unabomber. Not to mention his token "good liberal" (it's obvious that she's a liberal as she has some compassion towards minorities and the poor but her exact views aren't revealed).

I'm not going to get into his views on women; suffice it to say that I *don't* consider women a threat to US national security due to their emotional nature.


Perhaps this is a poorly written alternative history? One where Bush Jr. is a leader known for his strengthening of the military and resisting of the influence of right wing extremists, a moderate leader who follows Constitutional law; where George Soros (lightly concealed in the book as Aldo Verus) is the far left's Machiavelli determined to overthrow the benevolent Bush Administration through armed insurrection (using a secret army of robots, walking tanks/mechs and hovercycles......). However I can't seen any possible universe where Bill O'Reilly and FOX represent a fair and balanced news source.