Orson Scott Card is one of my all time favorite science fiction authors, and so when I saw this book on the shelves I was a little taken aback. A contemporary action-thriller novel? With his name on it? Strange. I decided to give it a shot anyways, and it turns out Card is pretty good at writing along the lines of Tom Clancy. It’s not a perfect novel, and I’d venture to say it doesn’t feel as comfortable as his far future stories such as the Ender sagas or his fantasy stories.
The premise goes as this: We follow an elite Army Ranger and his lovable sidekick as they attempt to uncover the nature of a plot to assasinate the President. While the president himself isn’t named, it’s pretty obvious the charater was based on George W. Bush, the despiseable Texan Right-Wing bastard. And of course, what story couldn’t be complete without dozens of references to the insanity of both sides of the extreme right-and-left political bases. Nobody knows if the impending civil war is a right-wing consipracy to make things more right-wing, or a left-wing conspiracy to make things definitively not right-wing and return power that was lost after the 2000 election debacle.
Here’s the thing. Card’s characters are great, as always. Our hero is all-American, and delivers one-two punches to the badguys. His wife is every man’s dream wife; the mother of 5 that could be top aide to the president. Our sidekick is also great. In fact, there’s not the usual dose of Card’s character complexities. Each character is cut from an unusual mold this time around, where the heroes do what heroes do best - kick ass and take names.
Meanwhile, what does detract from the novel is the fact that the premise is so outrageous that even a completely biased reader like myself (biased in the sense that Orson Scott Card can do no wrong) ends up saying, “This seems a tad bit over-the-edge”. Do I doubt that there are militant forces within the US that might try to stage their own version of the civil war? Possibly. But I think unfortunately Card was issued an ultimatuum from a video game manufacturer that said “We need a story that will pit the US in civil war. And we have mechs. And hovercycles.” I’m not making that part up, this book was the premise for a video game.
Card makes some legitimate points that our current fractures in society are along rural and suburban versus urban lines, but it doesn’t justify the fact that it would take a lot more than he gave credit for in order for the states to do what they did in this story. Again, not saying there’s anything fundamentally wrong with Empire, but it doesn’t jibe and it doesn’t feel complete. It feels forced.
Empire is a decent read, and it does read quickly. However, this Scifi Guy will hope that in the future, Card sticks to more extreme futures and pasts. He’s more comfortable there. And, oh yeah. Mr. Card. Please stop taking orders from video game designers. They haven’t had a good movie in forever, it’s not surprising that the novel can’t do it either.
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