Review: The Empire

I first heard of this book via The Galaxy Express, an awesomely titled blog that focuses on the subgenre of science fiction romance or SFR. It’s not the first time I’ve used the site to see what’s out there, and The Empire was the subject of an interesting series of posts about cover art. The cover blurb sounded interesting and the Kindle copy was only $2.99? Why not.

Why not, indeed. What Lang has presented here is a study in derivation. A quarter of the way into the book and there’s nothing here to hook me. The world is bland and brings absolutely nothing new to space opera. I realize this is SFR primarily, but SFR and space opera go hand in hand. It lives firmly within the standard scifi setting and doesn’t bother to do anything to spice things up. Sadistic totalitarian state? Yep. Alien menace from beyond the galaxy? Yep. Aliens who are just like humans for no good reason? Yep.

Not to mention errors throughout the text. Things that an editor should have caught, like a your/you’re problem early on and places where verb tense is wrong.

Then there’s the characters.

The hero, Adrian, is boring. Lang gets bonus points taken off for using rape as a plot device and making me actually read through the sexual abuse. This is not a way to get me to empathize with a hero whose primary personality trait–coldness–is something she constantly has to pepper throughout the text. It’s a way to get me to mark the author down as someone I never want to read again. Adrian’s coldness isn’t due to said torture, incidentally. Before Adrian’s torture and abuse (I should’ve stopped there, let’s be honest) his chilly personality is mentioned. More than once. In particular–look. I get it. He has cold eyes. I was less than 20% of the way through the book and had already grown tired of being informed of this.

Kali, our heroine, isn’t much better. She has more of a personality, to be sure, but she’s more an archetype than a person. She’s the brave/sacrificing/spunky/caring sort. Oh, and she’s also a telepathic near-human alien, which is something else that makes me facepalm. I get it when a television show has near-human aliens. That makes sense. Your actors are going to be human and you work with what you have. This isn’t television, and there’s no explanation given as to why there are near-human aliens. I’m not using the term humanoid because she doesn’t even have the decency to have a funny forehead or be randomly blue. (This is actually a problem I have with SFR in general. Too many near-human aliens, too little explanation.)

The brightest point by far is Bryce, the secondary male lead who was a con-man given the choice of enlisting in the military or going to prison. He and Kali are friends, and while he and Adrian don’t get along, he’s surprisingly loyal to the man. He’s not an impediment to whatever boring romance is going on between the boring heroes, either…he’s got this cute semi-antagonistic flirtation going with the junior officer whose quarters are next door to his. If this book were about Bryce and the obnoxious pretty girl next door who presses all the wrong buttons, this would be an ENTIRELY different review.

But it’s not. Perhaps I’m being too harsh here and an engaging plot sets in and Lang will stop telling me how Adrian is cold and actually make him more than just a cardboard cut-out. Maybe she’ll explain why Kali’s people are so close to human. I think the biggest disappointment here is how I can see the ghost of something I’d honestly love in this book.  Thing is, I’m a student. I have to read textbooks and notes and if the stuff I’m reading in my leisure time takes more than a quarter of the way through without presenting me anything I haven’t seen done better somewhere else? I’m not going to read the rest. My time is more valuable than that.

The Empire is by Elizabeth Lang and is published by IFWG Publishing.

Grade: DNF

Advertisement