Michael P. Kube-Mcdowell’s Empery Science Fiction Novel
Empry is the third book in the Trigon Disunity triolgy, which features the continuation of a story that begins decades in the relative past of the storyline (in the first book Emprise). The second story, Enigma, changes direction and follows the main character, Merritt Thackery, as he discovers the secrets of the universe while working for the survey department. These stories come full circle in Empry, as Mcdowell pits mankind against an unknown and terrifying enemy – the Mizari. Thanks to Thackery’s travels through both space and time, mankind now understands that the Mizari are the most notable threat to the existance of the human race – and events unfold to destroy the Mizari where they exist.
Empry focuses mostly on two characters dealing with the threat of alien invasion and decimation, the chancellor Sujata and the director of the military forces, Harmack Wells. These two characters have spent their entire lives reaching to positions of power in an effort to protect humanity from invasion and keep the unified worlds together.
What follows is a chase unlike many others in literature – it happens over the course of some forty-odd years, as these two individuals chase each other across the voids of space traveling and superluminous speeds trying to reach the perimiter. Meanwhile, across the universe, Thackery conjurs a plan to intervene and attempt to discover a solution to the Mizari threat by uncovering the secret of their existance. What are the black “stars” that seem to be able to wipe out essentially anything and everything placed in their way?
Interestingly, I read the Trigon Disunity Trilogy almost in tandem to Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Saga (Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, and Children of the Mind), and there are some parallel concepts that each author deals with similarly. One of the interesting and recurring plot concepts for science fiction is what will humans do if and when we meet an alien culture? In the Star Trek sagas, it seemed like every time Kirk or Picard would bump in to an alien they’d already know how to speak with them, and they’d enjoy some Romulan ale and call it a friendship. Star Wars featured seemingly dozens of different species of alien, but again everyone got along. Yet Card and Kube-Mcdowell are faced with the challenge of crafting aliens that truly are alien. They don’t share human values – they don’t even necessarily think or communicate in simliar ways. I’ll actually discuss more of my thoughts of this alien encounter stuff in a later blog post.
Overall, the Trigon Disunity trilogy is a great thrill ride from one end of the universe to the other – spanning generations of time as well. The series flows well together, but I couldn’t imagine reading one of the later books while skipping over the previous ones. These stories don’t stand alone – it’s essentially one long story split in to three books. It’s a fun ride, and ends leaving the reader satisfied in the characters and the potential for mankind.