Book Review – Orson Scott Card’s “Empire”
Today’s society seems more polarized than ever when it comes to the world of politics and social issues.
Take this recent election as an example. The political mud throwing and the name calling by the candidates’ supporters seemed to reach a new low as each side tried to prove how stupid and reckless the opposite side was. You had fascists on one side, socialists on the other, and the impartial media trying their best to swing voters to their heavily biased point-of-view.
When you consider the deeply opinionated views and the narrow margin between winning and losing, it’s safe to say that the country is divided as a whole. There is no sense of national unity at this point in time. Throw in the talk about states wanting to secede from the union and there you go. The country is ripe for a major event to split us apart.
Science fiction writer Orson Scott Card takes this frighteningly real scenario and takes it a few notches further with his 2006 novel, Empire.
Empire begins with a special forces raid somewhere in southern Asia, presumably Afghanistan. U.S. Army Captain Reuben Malich leads his squad against an opposition force in a small town. The commando raid itself is successful as all enemy forces are killed and his unit didn’t suffer any casualties, but the town’s village elder is shot and killed.
Empire transitions to some time later when Malich is studying at a local college. He’s under extra pressure as one of his professors continually calls him “Soldier Boy” and wants to debate him on various subjects in history. Malich keeps his cool while under pressure from the professor and he passes his class. It turns out that his professor somehow knows about Malich’s secret missions overseas, and he recruits Malich to perform some top secret duties here in the U.S.
Empire jumps forward again and we meet U.S. Army Captain Bartholomew Coleman, a special forces soldier who was recently selected to work for (now Major) Malich at the Pentagon. Coleman gets off to a rough start after he’s harassed by Malich’s secretary. He is able to get the phone number for Malich’s wife, and Coleman meets with her and Malich’s kids before receiving a phone call from Reuben himself. Malich has Coleman meet him in person at a park alongside the Potomac River.
Captain Coleman finally meets with Major Malich in person. While they’re in the park, Malic reveals his true mission to Coleman. It turns out that Malich was recruited to determine ways for terrorists to strike against the President of the United States. While the two special forces officers are talking, Malich’s very plan goes into action right in front of them.
Coleman noticed small objects slowly moving underwater up the Potomac River. Malich doesn’t believe him at first, but then it becomes very apparent that the objects are small submersibles, and nobody in the area has spotted them yet. He tries to call for help, but Malich quickly notices that the cell phones are being jammed. The two officers race over to a local DNR station and manage to acquire some assault rifles. They have the park rangers go on foot to alert the police and Secret Service while Malich and Coleman try to stop the terrorists.
The terrorists are one step ahead of the special forces officers. They’ve secured a bridge over the Potomac River, they’ve stopped traffic, and as Malich and Coleman watch in horror, the terrorists are setting up rockets to be launched at the White House. The soldiers fire upon and try to stop the terrorists, but the bad guys still manage to launch one of the rockets towards the White House.
After other soldiers and emergency personnel arrive on scene, Malich and Coleman learn that the rocket hit the White House. Not only did it hit the building, but it struck precisely where the President and a bunch of his cabinet members were currently meeting. That one rocket attack assassinated the president. It turns out that the vice president was also assassinated in a separate incident when a garbage truck smashed into the VP’s limousine.
Following the order of succession, the Speaker of the House of Representatives is quickly sworn in as the new president. A congressman from Idaho, a person most people had never even heard of, was now acting as the leader of the free world.
Malich and Coleman are both taken back to the Pentagon for an extensive debriefing about their role in stopping the assassination. What bothers Malich the most (apart from the terrorists themselves) is that the terrorists followed his report to the dot. His CLASSIFIED report. Somebody in the Pentagon was responsible for taking his attack plan and turning it over to the enemy. Not only that, but somebody in the White House had to coordinate the attack and tell the terrorists which room to hit in the building.
It’s clear that somebody unknown is setting Malich up to be thrown under the bus. It’s too much of a coincidence that not only was Malich the one who created the attack plan, but he was also there in person when the terrorists carried out the attack. After he and Coleman are finally released from the Pentagon, they visit the Washington Post newspaper and tell their side of the story. The Post is skeptical but gives Malich a fair reporting of the story.
Meanwhile, people are already spinning the terrorist attack and trying to place blame on the opposite political party. The president who was assassinated was somewhat of a moderate Republican. The Democrats are trying to blame extremists and the right wing conspiracy for carrying out the attack, claiming that the president wasn’t conservative enough. The Republicans, on the other hand, want to blame the liberals for carrying out the attack against the conservatives.
Malich has his wife take their kids to her aunt’s home in New Jersey. Reuben and Coleman soon follow and meet them there to avoid the press for a few days. And the feds. It took the help of Malich’s special forces buddies to shake the surveillance of the feds once he and Coleman were released from the Pentagon.
Early the next morning, neither Malich or Coleman could sleep, so they head up to New York City and visit Ground Zero where the World Trade Center once stood. As they drive through New York City in the predawn hour, a much different sight awaits the soldiers. Standing in the street is a mech, a high-tech battle vehicle (some have a human pilot, some operate by remote control) that walks on two legs.
The seizure of America has begun.
The mech orders for Malich and Coleman to stop moving and surrender themselves. They ignore its orders and make a run for it. The mech tracks and follows them, ordering them again to stop before it opens fire with its machine guns. Malich and Coleman ultimately dodge and escape from the mech by ducking through a store and making it to a back alley.
It turns out that there were many mechs in the city that morning, all of them targeting policemen and everybody else wearing a uniform. Both Coleman and Malich were wearing their BDUs (battle dress uniform, a.k.a. “camouflage”), so the mech considered them to be a valid target. Malich and Coleman coordinate some NYPD officers, and they conduct an attack against a mech. They’re successful and discover that this particular mech was not occupied.
Malich and Coleman talk the police officers into leaving the city and evacuating through a tunnel to New Jersey. They all do so and are followed by some of the mechs. The New Jersey National Guard is alerted and waiting for them on the opposite side of the tunnel. The soldiers commence firing on the mechs once they emerge from the tunnel. Their defence is successful and the remaining mechs retreat back to New York City.
At this time two Air Force F-16 fighters attempt to fly over the city, but they both suddenly crash into the ground. Some type of EMP weapon was able to fire and disable both of the aircraft, taking them out of the sky. New York City was now under the control of the “Progressive Restoration,” a liberal extremist organization run by Aldo Verus.
Malich’s wife is called upon by the new president and asked to work with him. Although she votes on the opposite side of the political spectrum, Mrs. Malich was one of the Idaho congressmen’s best staffers during his early days in Congress. She reluctantly agrees to give him a hand knowing that it’ll mean being away from her children during this time of crisis.
Reuben Malich and Coleman return to the Pentagon so that Malich can retrieve his files concerning his special operations here in the U.S. While in his office, Malich’s secretary, DeeNee, shoots and kills Major Malich. Coleman barely escapes being shot and he makes a quick getaway from the Pentagon. He’s being pursued by more mechs and special hover bikes. Coleman makes a few phone calls and the President is able to authorize some Apache helicopter gunships to protect him.
The newly appointed National Security Advisor, Averell Torrent (Coleman’s former professor in college), assigns Coleman along with Malich’s former special forces buddies the task of finding information about the Progressive Restoration organization including their headquarters. The men take some time and come up with a theory about where they’re most likely located. They’re authorized to conduct reconnaissance on the organization’s lair.
After the attack and capture of New York City, several states agreed with the terms set upon by the Progressive Restoration. It’s determined that the Progressive Restoration is located in the state of Washington and near a newly dammed lake. Coleman joins with the special forces and they sneak their way into Washington.
Sure enough, their theory about the organization’s headquarters is correct. Coleman and another soldier are doing recon on a lake when the lake itself begins to drain and enemy troops appear out of nowhere. The special forces men fire upon the enemy soldiers and take control of the small shed on the side of the lake. Coleman and the other guy quickly figure out there’s a trap door hidden in the room. They manage to open it and raid the Progressive Restoration’s headquarters. The leader, Aldo Verus, is ultimately captured and hauled back to Washington, D.C.
It turns out that the Progressive Restoration’s underground headquarters was nestled between two artificial lakes. Massive pumps would actually transfer the water from one lake to the other and reveal hidden tunnels with waterproof doors just beneath the waterline. Those doors are the entrance to tunnels which hold hundreds of mech units along with more hover bikes and the rest of the organization’s arsenal.
After the successful raid against the Progressive Restoration, National Security Advisor Torrent is hailed as a national hero. Both the Democrats and Republicans nominate them as their candidate for president. Naturally, Torrent sweeps the polls and is elected as the nation’s next president.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Malich has been studying her late husbands notes from when he was one of Torrent’s students back in college. Coleman helps her connect the dots and the two of them discover that Torrent’s views and attitudes heavily suggest that he wanted the terrorist attack and brief period of civil unrest that followed. It’s suggested that he was the puppet master controlling the Progressive Restoration. This leaves room for a sequel to Empire.
So is Orson Scott Card’s Empire any good?
Empire tries to be a thrilling novel when you factor in the terrorists and the political mess that followed. The problem is that nearly everything in this book, from the (brief) combat scenes to the dialogue to the scenarios themselves is WAY . . . TOO . . . SIMPLE!
This story is so simplistic and corny at times that it’s nearly insulting. Personally, I couldn’t wait until I hit the last page and finished with this piece of garbage of a book.
I picked up Card’s Empire because the combat scene on the cover looked pretty cool AND the synopsis inside the cover sounded interesting. It sounded like this would be a tale of a bloody civil war that takes place in the near future. Part of the book’s description states, “The war of words between Right and Left has collapsed into a shooting war, though most people just want to be left alone. The battle rages between the high-technology weapons on one side and militia foot soldiers on the other, devastating the cities and overrunning the countryside.”
That sounds pretty cool, doesn’t it?
The problem (one of several problems, actually) is that there really is no “shooting war,” and certainly not the devastation of cities and people being overrun in the countryside.
There’s a little bit of shooting in NYC as the soldiers try to stop the mechs, and there’s a little more shooting during the raid at the Progressive Restoration’s headquarters. That’s pretty much it. Cities are certainly not being devastated, and you hear of basically nothing happening in the countryside. It’s not like a grand army is sweeping through the country and guerrilla forces are fighting back against it.
The vast majority of the U.S. military is not used in this book. There’s nothing about the Navy, almost no mention of the Marines, and very little of the Army or Air Force. Nor do any of our international enemies try to attack or even threaten to attack the country while there’s chaos from the Progressive Restoration. Everybody sits back and watches as a handful of special warfare soldiers take on the armed opponents.
Throw in the corny dialogue, the overly simplified storyline and talking points, the lack of warfare, and plot holes big enough for a battleship, and there you go. Empire may be straight out of today’s headlines, but this book is pure fantasy.
Oh, how I wished that Empire was a much better story. The book had so much potential with the setting and theme of extremist groups fighting for control of the country. Card drops the ball and Empire fails miserably.
If you would like to enjoy a fantastic book written by Orson Scott Card, I highly recommend Ender’s Game.
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This article was originally published on December 12, 2012.