Hidden Empire

November 2, 2009
Card combines flag-waving, political diatribe and Christian fervor in this bombastic sequel to 2007's Empire
. The young American Empire is confronted with its first major crisis since the Progressive War: the appearance in Africa of a highly communicable and lethal disease. America quarantines the entire continent, while pompous President Torrent dispatches an elite team of supersoldiers to help slow the disease's spread. Young Mark Malich is compelled by his Christian principles to volunteer to help the benighted African natives, but he winds up in a Nigerian hospital targeted for destruction by malevolent Sudanese soldiers, leading to questions about Torrent's true goals. An evil dictator is named Idi De Gaulle, the bad guys machine-gun live babies, and FOX News gets prominent placement, but the only people likely to pick this up are those who share Card's politics, rendering subtlety less necessary.

November 1, 2009
In order to save the United States from a plague decimating Nigeria, President Averell Torrent orders a quarantine of all Africa.

Pilloried as racist and inhumane, he switches tactics and sends his political advisor Cecily Malich, along with a team that includes the boy who unknowingly unleashed"the monkey sickness" on the world, to provide medical help. Plague turns out to be only part of Africa's problem. Sudanese soldiers are on a rampage, and EMP devices undercut the electronically enhanced exoskeletons and weaponry of the Special Ops team headed by Captain Bartholomew Coleman sent in to restore order. Is it possible that President Torrent, on a massive empire-building mission, has set in motion plans to realign Africa, making the new nations dependent on him for support? Did he also engineer a tiny civil war in the United States that caused the death of Cecily's husband Reuben and the imprisonment of Aldo Verus (Empire, 2006)? The Special Ops team concludes that assassinating Torrent is the only way to stop him. Coleman and Cecily must decide who can bring the greater global good—Torrent, Verus or the Ops boys—and act accordingly.

A morality lesson for the video-arcade generation from Hugo and Nebula Award–winner Card (A War of Gifts, 2007, etc.).

(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

November 15, 2009
In the near future, political scientist Averell Torrent has become President of the United States following a devastating civil war prompted by runaway technology and a polarization of conservatives and liberals. Only one man, Capt. Bartholomew Coleman, knows Torrent's true agenda and must find a way to prove it to the public before his enemies silence him. The award-winning author of "Ender's Game" and its sequels excels at cautionary fiction. VERDICT Card folds his empathic and compassionate views on politics and the human condition into compelling storytelling and believable characters, and this results in a fast-paced, well-crafted sf thrillerthe sequel to Card's best-selling "Empire".

Copyright 2009 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 15, 2009
Card picks up the near-future launched in Empire (2006) a few years later, at first in Nigeria, where a 12-year-old monkey-catcher becomes the second victim and first survivor of a new, hypervirulent epidemic. Back in the postsecond civil war U.S., President Torrent decides to quarantine all Africa and to send Empires surviving heros special-ops team to Nigeria to stop its governments genocidal operation against its non-Muslim population, among whom the epidemic started. Before long, and at the conscience-prodding of her 13-year-old son, Empires nonsurviving heros widow, a top presidential advisor, is spearheading a voluntary effort to nurse the sick and train caregivers, starting at the plagues ground zero. Such is the setup for an even more potent blend of high-tech military action, imperial politics, conspiracy, and practical philosophizing than Card whipped up in Empire. While the dialogue is often as cornball and Hollywoodish as before (particularly among the soldiers), the adult principals are sturdy, and in the African boy, Chinma, Card gives us a kid hero to rank with his sf immortals, Ender and Bean.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)