yonmei

05:56 pm: Orson Scott Card's new novel, Chapter One
xraytheenforcer invited me to google for Empire, Orson Scott Card's new novel, partially available online, and OMG it is awfully, dreadfully bad.

Oh my God. "All four soldiers were highly trained for their Special Ops assignment. Which meant that they understood a great deal about local agriculture and husbandry, trade, food storage, and other issues on which the survival and prosperity of the village depended. They had arrived with rudimentary skills in the pertinent languages, but now they were reasonably fluent in the language of the village."

Gosh, really?

But wait! It gets worse:

"They had killed no one in front of these villagers, and in fact they had killed no one, ever, anywhere. Yet there was something about them, their alertness, the way they moved, that gave warning, the way a tiger gives warning simply by the fluidity of its movement and the alertness of its eyes."

And it's patronising, too:

"There came a day that one of the villagers, a young man who had been away for a week, came home, and within a few minutes had told his news to the elder who, for lack of anyone better, was regarded by the villagers as the wisest counselor. He, in turn, brought the young man to the Americans."

And then, because that's the kind of thing gosh-wow Americans can do: "Captain Malich took his own weapon and, adjusting for wind and distance, took careful aim and killed the swordsman with a single shot."

And: "The other three Americans understood immediately the change of plans. They took aim at the enemies who would be able to take cover most easily, and killed them. Then they settled down to shooting the others one by one."

"One of the soldiers encountered a terrorist who was holding a child as a hostage. There was no thought of negotiation. The American took aim instantly, fired, and the terrorist dropped dead with a bullet through his eye."

And then: "At the end, the sole surviving terrorist panicked. He ran to the center of the square, where many of the villagers were still cowering, and leveled his automatic weapon to mow them down."

I love that touch: the villagers are "cowering", the terrorist "panicked". So subtle.

But there's just one brave native: "The old man still had one last spring in his ancient legs, and he threw himself onto the automatic weapon as it went off."

And then; "Reuben Malich knelt over the body and cried out in the keening wail of deep grief, the anguish of a soul on fire. He tore open the shirt of his uniform and struck himself repeatedly on the chest. This was not part of his training. He had never seen anyone do such a thing, in any culture. Striking himself looked to his fellow soldiers like a kind of madness. But the surviving villagers joined him in grief, or watched him in awe."

But: "Within moments he was back on the job, interrogating the abject young betrayer while the other soldiers explained to the villagers that this boy was not the enemy, just a frightened kid who had been coerced and lied to by the terrorists and did not deserve to be killed."

Gosh. It's... it's almost as if this were a comic book! I can see it in my mind's eye: the line drawings, the bubble dialogue.

"Six hours later, the terrorist base camp was pounded by American bombs; by noon the next day, it had been scoured to the last cave by American soldiers flown in by chopper."

Of course.

Finally:

"Sir, I had to show him honor in a way they would understand, so that his heroic death became an asset to us instead of a liability."

"It was all acting?"

"None of it was acting," said Captain Malich. "All I did was permit it to be seen."

The colonel turned to the clerk. "All right, shut off the tape." Then, to Malich: "Good work, Major. You're on your way to New Jersey."

Which is how Reuben Malich learned he was a captain no more. As for New Jersey, he had no idea what he would do there, but at least he already spoke the language, and fewer people would be trying to kill him.

Tags: dissecting orson scott card, reading empire