Hidden Empire (Empire, #2) in Ender's Jeesh

Aug 10, 2010 Carlos Velez rated it it was amazing

Orson Scott Card's standing with me is well preserved. I loved this story as I did it's predecessor Empire.

Set in modern day America, the story satisfies Card's (and my) love of sci/fi with a few tasteful dollops of sci/fi-esque technology. Otherwise, this is a story set in a web of politics and war, but is ultimately about people.

This section contains a spoiler for the previous book, Empire: The main character behind the story (and I really mean behind) is Averell Torrent. The charismatic and p Orson Scott Card's standing with me is well preserved. I loved this story as I did it's predecessor Empire.

Set in modern day America, the story satisfies Card's (and my) love of sci/fi with a few tasteful dollops of sci/fi-esque technology. Otherwise, this is a story set in a web of politics and war, but is ultimately about people.

This section contains a spoiler for the previous book, Empire: The main character behind the story (and I really mean behind) is Averell Torrent. The charismatic and powerful President, brought into office after the almost-outbreak of civil war in America (the main plotline of Empire) makes few appearances in either novel. Both novels, however, are built around this enigmatic character. The decisions he makes and his remarkable ability to anticipate major world events and prepare solutions to them cast suspicion on his motives and level of involvement. The book has much to do with the reactions of the people around him, with the struggle to judge the moral decisions of a man in his kind of position of power.

But all this is an undercurrent beneath the main storyline about the outbreak of an epidemic in Africa, an American-led quarantine of the entire continent, the courage and conviction of volunteers who travel to Africa to aid the sick at clear risk to their own lives. But it's not just the epidemic that threatens. There is also the problem of the army of Sudan committing genocide on whole cultures of African people with the illness, and the resulting conflict with the American military.

It's about people stepping up to be their best. It's about people making hard decisions and sacrifices.

Card, as usual, delivers more than an action story, a political struggle, or the strategies of war. He delivers the most personal aspects of humanity - our fears, our desires, our motivations - all great and small.

I am excited to learn, during the afterword, that there is much more to this story than a couple of novels. A videogame, Shadow Complex, based on Empire came out last summer, and there are plans for a movie (movies?). I will have to look around and see if I can find an affordable used copy of Shadow Complex while I look forward to whatever else is to come from this series. ...more

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May 22, 2010 Scott rated it it was amazing

Shelves: politics, fantasy-sci-fi

Second book in the promising Empire series, which imagines a near future after a red state-blue state civil war, and a bipartisan consensus president who is suspected by some of the characters as having ambitions about turning the US into a global empire and keeping democracy only as a symbolic shadow of the past. The most enjoyable parts of the book for me were the interactions between members of the Malich family. Card has a talent for bringing together personalities that are believable, enter ...more

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Sep 18, 2014 Joe Frazier rated it really liked it

Shelves: political-thriller

Orson Scott Card does nothing if he doesn't thoroughly analyze a topic through his novels. Some may be pure fiction, such as time travel analyzed in Pathfinder and Ruins, stand-ins for the non-fictional such as the Ender series where he analyzes hatred of and hostility towards those who are different (Ender's Game), then dealing with the consequences of how you treat those who are "other", alien or different than you. In Empire and Hidden Empire, Mr. Card reflects on the political chasm of those ...more

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Feb 14, 2019 Susan rated it liked it

Shelves: series, science-fiction, fiction

I'd nearly forgotten the first book in this series by the time I picked this up, so I had to learn about President Averell Torrent all over again here. And, while Torrent isn't present for a lot of the action, it is his desire to turn America into an Empire that drives much of what happens. What gives him the opportunity is the outbreak of a new virus in Africa, which threatens to become a worldwide pandemic. How he and others react to that forms the core of the story.

I enjoyed the book because ...more

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Sep 20, 2011 TJ Anderson rated it it was amazing

Shelves: read-2011

I really enjoyed this book. I hate politics and almost everything anyone has to say about it. But so much of what OSC says in this book is incredibly true, and has the bonus of being a great novel. Full characters, plot, the works.

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