Empire

By Orson Scott Card

I'm fairly familiar with Card's work, having read several of the books in his Ender series, all of Maps in a Mirror, his Homecoming series and some standalone works. Plus right now I'm in the middle of his Alvin Maker series. But this book was a big surprise to me. It's an action thriller, of all things, and a darn good one.  My review is based on the audio CD version of this novel.

The premise of the book is a new civil war breaks out in the U.S. shortly after the President, Vice President and several other high-ranking government officials are assassinated. And from there, the novel is all-out action. Well, not quite. But it has more action than I was expecting and since I was listening to it on audio CD, I almost felt like I was watching an action movie! Great book, moves fast. It has some really unexpected twists and turns and kept me guessing. I'm not surprised that the screenplay rights have already been optioned; it would make a great movie.

Card changes speed from action to political philosophy fairly often in this book. While I didn't really mind too much, some of the political philosophy I didn't really "get". I wasn't totally lost, but it didn't really hold my interest like the action did.

What's interesting is that this book wasn't Card's idea. The idea was the brainchild of the team at Chair Entertainment. They wanted to do a video game about a modern-day civil war and thought a book by Card would help the franchise. While the book has been out for a while, I haven't heard a peep about the video game. But it does look like they've acquired the interactive rights to Card's Ender's Game franchise.

Card finishes the book with a discourse on his own political philosophy and talks about how disappointed he is in the current polarized political atmosphere in the US today. He makes several good observations. One that stuck with me is that if a person identifies with just one ideal from either the left or the right, he is immediately labeled as belonging to that camp, whether or not he subscribes to all of their beliefs or not. For example, a person can't believe in gay marriage and be against abortion. As soon as they announce their support for gay marriage, they are immediately lumped in with the left-wing crowd, even though they are pro-life or even if all their other ideas are very right wing. As soon as they announce their lack of support of legalized abortion, they are immediately labeled a right-winger, or a conservative. There is no idea of true moderate in today's politics. I agree with this completely. I don't agree with all of Card's ideas (I don't think the country is on the brink of another civil war), but all his observations are interesting. It was nice to hear them in Card's own voice, too.

Overall, a very good read (or listen). The ending is a little ambiguous, but it didn't prevent me from enjoying it immensely.

External links

• The first five chapters of Empire at Card's website, Hatrack River
• Empire on Wikipedia