Treason Only Matters When It Is Committed By Trusted Men.

Title - Empire

Author - Orson Scott Card

Genre - Science Fiction

Published - 2007

Pages - 368

ISBN - 0765355221

..........................FFR - 4, 5, 8

Card begins this book detached from the main story-line, giving us plenty of background on several of the main characters.  It's a bit of a slow start, in my opinion, full of technical mumbo-jumbo, but informative and occasionally entertaining.

The premise of the book is that there is a coup in the United States, a modern civil war, which is the driving force of the story.  Despite the contemporaneous feel of the story (taking place in a time not too far removed from the date of publication), Card provides us with a sack-load of cool (possibly impractical) technologies used to conduct the coup.  

Warning:  This book practically bellows Card's political beliefs.  Card, who is a strong supporter of George W. Bush and his administration, never names the president assassinated in the book, but it is hinted that the Chief Executive is, if not Bush, a Bush clone.  The rebelling faction is clearly mis-led and doesn't fully understand why the President has done the things he's done, the things that have led to the rifting of the nation.  

Card does make it clear that the problems are not primarily because of any specific ideology, he does not blame the Democrats or Republicans, but rather he tries to spread the blame evenly.  The the ultimate cause is the polarization of the political parties. The Dems are too liberal, the Reps are too conservative, and there isn't enough voice provided for the moderates.

In the end, I enjoyed the story, though I found the political agenda occasionally oppressive (and I share, more or less, his political views). The technologies were cool, if not always convincing.  The coup itself was executed in an interesting way, though I didn't believe anything about the rebels' headquarters.  The whole climactic sequence moved very quickly, and was kind of confusing, not to mention fairly unrealistic (read: impossible).

I would recommend this book to anybody who thinks Card can do no wrong; however, If you are looking for the quality of Ender's Game, you'll want to read something else.  His early works are still his best, and his more recent work has suffered from an unknown (to me) cause that I can only speculate about.  Needless to say, he's still a first rate thinker, and an excellent story-teller, I just think he might be rushing some of his later stories.  If you just like cool sci-fi-ish stuff, this book has some.  If you think military strategy is friggin' awesome stuff to read about but don't actually know anything about it yourself, this book is probably right up your alley.  If you do know something about military, I'd be interested to hear what your take is on this book, because I don't know if it's anywhere near accurate. 

All in all, it's ok.  Give it a look-see if you don't mind political agendas, flawed technologies, or if you simply love Card.