this is a story of what it might look like if american extremists tried to take over our govt. i was quite shocked when one of the main characters was killed. it left me kinda breathless and mad. never had an author do that to me before. Card's postword was interesting. He lamented at the political extemes that have become so prevalent in the media and politics and thinks a solution is being willing to disagree politically but to still see the opposite side as human with valid if different points of view.

Good book. Scary in its portrayal of the future but well written.

I’m an admirer of Orson Scott Card’s sci-fi and felt he was brave to venture into Empire, a political intrigue / military action thriller.
But the more I thought about Empire, the more I started to question the premise, especially the author's stated position of political neutrality – left vs right.
The author’s disgust with liberals became obvious through his portrayal of a highly organized and well financed fifth column of left-wingers who launch a brazen rocket attack on the White House and assassinate the president and vice-president en route to killing everyone in sight and generally undermining the American way using high-tech weaponry reminiscent of War of the Worlds.
I appreciate that this is fiction and an author has full right to portray any scenario that his/her mind can conjure.
What irked me were his personal comments tacked on to the end of the audiobook I listened to proclaiming his neutrality and calling for everyone - left and right to hold hands and sing kumbaya.
Great thoughts until you realize any coming together appears to require everyone's thinking to fall within what's acceptable to America's religious right.
Empire presents the fictitious scenario of a hidden hand manipulating America's future. Perhaps I'm reading too much into it but I see Card attempting the same thing through this clumsy effort at literary gerrymandering.
I found what might have been a decent read for me spoiled by the author's personal agenda.

Most of the negative reviews seem to ignore the author's afterword, which includes the following paragraph: "This book is fiction. It is entertainment. I do not believe a new American civil war is inevitable; and if it did happen, I do not believe it would necessarily take the form I show in this book, politically or militarily. Since the war depicted in these pages has not happened, I am certainly not declaring either side in our polarized public life guilty of causing it. I only say that for the purposes of this story, we have this set of causes; in the real world, if we should ever be so stupid as to allow a civil war to happen again, we would obviously have a different set of specific causes." He literally wrote this to inform a video game and future movie, not as a political pamphlet.

True, we now live in a prelude to autocracy that happens to be right-winged (ish), and it's a Trump-supporting billionaire who's illegally trashing the government, not a progressive billionaire. But I don't think that has anything to do with the reasonableness of Card's fiction. I found his main characters--some of whom are conservative, some liberal--fully drawn, perfectly believable, and enjoyable, though I'd agree his villains, and some of the supporting cast, are flat and narrow.

But Card goes on to say that he deplores the American status quo in which the loudest voices anywhere on the political spectrum feel the other side consists mostly of evil or ignorant scum, leavened with the sadly deceived. He also notes that these voices treat you as evil if you disagree with them on 5% of issues, even if you are 95% with them. And he points out that groupthink in academia can ruin careers even if the ivory tower's power pales in the shadow of a government's power. He concludes that until we believe that good, wise people can disagree with us on some issues, we elevate the risk of painful outcomes for our country. I strongly agree with that message.

Our civil war was an anomalous event that could never ever happen again, right? I mean, people yell and get angry and say “not my president” and all that, but that’s more like siblings bickering than people getting ready to fight each other. Isn’t it? I mean, except for those few crazies way on the other side of the political spectrum from me. Oh, and there’s no way that the assassination of some archduke in Sarajevo could ignite a war, either.

Don’t look down. We’re on quite the precipice.

The story itself gets a 3.75 stars. The military guys were a little too heroic to be realistic… they were playing roles rather than being people. I could see the puppet strings sometimes. I did really like the enigma that remains even after the book has ended. That’s the main thing that’s going to have me read the next book in the series.

The idea and the afterword of the book, I will give 4.75 or maybe even 5 stars. I seriously believe that we have so much hate and divisiveness right now that we could plunge into a civil war far easier than anyone wants to imagine. Therefore, we should imagine it, which is exactly what Orson Scott Card has done here. And I really liked how he afterworded the book. I really like how he described the only way to keep us from plunging off the cliff into Civil War II, a war that no one wants. We need to recognize that a moderate is a sane position in this political climate. We need to see the flaws in our own political party or ideology. The other side does not have only ignorant or deluded people, those people simply have different priorities. We need to realize. And reflect on the fanatics on our own side: do we really agree with everything they profess?

Me, I’m done voting for the crazy parties. I’m going to make my vote count from now on by voting only for “third party” candidates. At least until the other ones figure out how to get along.

I marked this one as thinking book since it gave me a lot to chew on.

For starts, this is the first Orson Scott Card book I've read, after recommendations from many people I trust, and it was . . . not what I expected. To be fair, they all read the Ender series, and I might still get into that, but this one. . . it's set in a theoretical near future (less than a dozen years after September 11, let's say) where the US dissolves into civil war. Some parts of it felt very dated (the post 9/11 paranoia about "terrorists" has pretty much dissipated from my perspective in 2025, but their shadowy threat is used by the author as a convenient bogeyman that is self-evidently bad, and also always credible. That part didn't age very well, but the very real divisions between right and left explored here seem almost childish by comparison to today's vitriol.

It was (for me) an important look into the mindset of the right wing, but it at times gave me vertigo, particularly when some made up billionaire from the LEFT if building a secret army? Of sci-fi mechs and hoverbikes? and is plotting to kill off the whole of the NYPD? I mean, if I was that super evil left-wing lunatic (I've been called that and worse, come to think of it), that's not how I'd do it? And that while everyone is being misled, the "good guys" all somehow recognize each other? And do the right thing? Because they are all sworn to protect the US? Nevermind that some of them are being ordered to attack it? and it's SUPER EASY to tell bad Americans from good Americans?

I think the good-guys / bad-guys was quite simplistic (I think this would have benefitted from a Game of Thrones style "No one THINKS they are doing evil, since they are doing it to save their OWN family/honour/house/country etc" but GOT came out later). I also fought a fair bit with the "Everybody HATES us!" narrative that I have noted exists in some places in OUR world, and I have to say that it was as wearying in the book as it is in real life.

All told, I'm glad I read it, but I'm not sure that I can recommend it, and I don't think I'm going to bother reading the rest of the series.

I read this awhile ago but a friend reminded me of it and it occurred to me that I haven't reviewed it. The Empire series is one of the funniest book series I have ever read and for all the wrong reasons. Rather than attempt to explain to you why it is incredibly funny, I'm going to instead give a short synopsis of the early part of the book.

The moderate left-leaning Republican President of the United States (explicitly George W. Bush) and his Vice President are assassinated by a super-trained group of genius soldiers who turn out to be using the plan of a black ops American soldier who explains he had nothing to do with it and is immediately believed. He then investigates a sinister Democrat conspiracy (reminding us that not all Democrats are evil) that trails back to what is explicitly George Soros with a new name.

The state of New York City is conquered by the evil liberals with hover bikes and walking tanks from Star Wars. The people of New York welcome this liberation from the evil Republican administration. Our heroes, two manly men out to do manly things, when go to liberate New York by themselves and capture the bad guys.

This was made to be a tie-in to the SHADOW COMPLEX video game that is just a side-scrolling G.I. Joe homage where you go after a bunch of reactionary terrorists whose political affiliation is never identified but is indicated to be Neo-Confederates. Just as a note, I love in Kentucky and do you know how many Democrat liberal militias I've encountered? Not many. That's not to say the Ultra-Right has a lock on all political extremism but this book is just *weird* from beginning to end.

It's triply funny by the end where Orson Scott Card finishes his story about how the Democrats are coming to kill us all but believes this book shall talk about how we all need to put aside political partistanship.

So when picking up this book, imagine Tom Clancy trying to write a G.I. Joe comic but much-much sillier.

3/10

It's rare that I get to use the term "puerile shit," especially when it comes to one of my favorite authors, Orson Scott Card.

However, 'Empire' afforded me that opportunity -- in spades-- and before I'd finished this right-wing-infused manifesto thinly disguised as a novel, I had many, many other opportunities to generate even more graphic and offensive terminology.

OSC's foray into the techno-thriller world dominated by Clancys, Coonts, and Browns, is mediocre storytelling at best, and stunningly sub-par for Card. But it's the passages such as this that bore me:

“A lot of Americans would love to slam the doors shut and let the rest of the world go hang.”

“And if we did,” said Cole, “who would save Europe then? How long before they find out that negotiations only work if the other guy is scared of the consequences of not negotiating? Everybody hates America till they need us to liberate them.”

“You’re forgetting that nobody cares what Europeans think except a handful of American intellectuals who are every bit as anti-American as the French,” said Malich.

Yeah, it would be one thing if these characters represented one perspective in the book, balanced by others, however, these characters are tasked to present the ONLY perspective -- or rather, the only perspective worth respecting -- and as a result, their dialogue and ideology both become even more strained, growing both tired and tiresome. The narrative is written in a manner that suggests that to disagree with this "America! Fuck yeah!" position, you immediately are in league with the novels "villians" -- the weak, leftist intelligentsia.

OSC was once an innovator, a dreamer, someone who saw promise even in bad situations. Drawn into writing the Empire series by a computer-gaming company (no, I'm not making that up), OSC offers little in the book with which I could empathize, and that is strange territory as a Card fan. Instead of rooting for the protagonist, I found myself rooting for some breakthrough moment when Card would cast away the pretense and show you it was all a rouse -- but it never comes and instead I rooted for the book simply to be over already.

(And yes, you read that correctly -- Empire SERIES. Don't wipe just yet, because OSC is pinching off another turd.)

This book was doomed from the start. Any time an author inserts their bi-partisan politics into a story, they are going to alienate three groups of people: 1.) Those who hold the opposing set of views; 2.) Those who share their views but think that preaching "my politics are better than your politics" is the root of most political dysfunction; and 3.) Those who think neither party is favorable. The odd thing is that after the story concludes, Card delivers a very nice summary of how bi-partisan politics is destroying the country (Right after getting done participating in that exact act). The other huge detractor is the blatant sexism (it is the wife's "duty" to quit her prestigious job to stay home and take care of the children). Card is a talented story-teller and the part at the end was nice, but everything else wasn't something I would recommend.

I have seen reviews of this book that complained of its politics, and that was the reason it was rated low overall. To be honest, the politics of the book are one thing which is more of a background filler while what the author is conveying stands more about how the divide within America has become so pronounced that there have been fears of a coming Civil War or at least extreme strife within the populations.

The overall story is not that bad and is pretty well thought out. There is action in this book from the beginning, but the book really gets going around pg 130, where things are a bit more interesting, and you start reading with a bit more enthusiasm. The main characters are a bit sappy, particularly Malich, who seems like he is the most perfect, incorruptible person on the planet. Like a man without sin, and so is his costar. You can't really differentiate between the two. They may as well be the same person. The writing isn't great in terms of the verbiage. It's pretty dry, and i had to at times force myself to continue.

The best part of the book is the opening paragraphs in italics. I think that there was a lot of wisdom in those passages, and I liked rereading them. All in all, it wasn't bad. There were definitely some really imaginative moments where you were like; this is cool, so I would recommend this book if you like action in governmental sort of environment.

Ugh.

Spoiler Alert, though I don't recommend you read this book, so whatever.

This book is bad. The plot is largely unbelievable (without spoiling anything, the main plot is plausible, but the sci-fi elements introduced halfway through make you go "Wha...?"). It has way too much dialogue from characters that you wouldn't expect to be wordy. Card throws in a few mysteries that are, frankly, uninteresting.

Additionally, the flow just didn't work for me. From the first action sequence where things are setup just a little too perfectly and the main characters spring into action, to the last one where a hidden base assault reads like a group of friends jaunting through a cave, the storytelling is just bad.

Save yourself some time, read the synopsis on amazon/here, and just nod your head knowingly.

If Clancy had a sense of humor and a philosophy degree, he could have written this book. (Sorry Clancy fans, he's just not my thing)

This is one of the scariest books I've read in a long time. The plot - an American civil war between the left and the right - is just too plausible, once the story begins to unfold. It gave me chills.

The action was great; the chase scenes, etc were as vivid as a movie. I loved the character development: the loyal military wife, the bad-ass ex special ops buddies, even the Machiavellian bad guys.

Also notable is the subtle, dry humor throughout the book. I found myself literally laughing out loud. The sarcastic one-liners should've seemed out of place, but the humor-in-the-face-of-adversity thing just made everyone seem more likable and real.

I only gave this book 4 starts because it is not the sort of tale I enjoy on a regular basis - I like to escape through reading, and this book was a little too close to home. Also, the story seemed to drag a bit in the last third.

All in all, a good book for those who like thought-provoking military plots.