Popular young adult author, Scott Westerfeld, brings his unique style to adult science fiction in The Risen Empire. Oftentimes referred to as a space opera, the captivating story is more like an action packed space adventure, with space battles and glimmers into the future. Without losing his particular form of writing, Westerfeld blends the thoughts of many to create an interconnected story of grand proportions.
The undead Emperor has ruled his mighty interstellar empire of eighty human worlds for sixteen hundred years. Because he can grant a form of eternal life-after-death, creating an elite known as the Risen, his power is absolute. He and his sister, the Child Empress, who is eternally a little girl, are worshipped as living gods.
The Rix are machine-augmented humans who worship very different gods: AI compound minds of planetary size. Cool, relentless fanatics, their only goal is to propagate such AIs. They seek to end the Emperor’s prolonged rule, and supplant it with an eternal cybernetic dynasty. They begin by taking the Child Empress hostage. Captain Laurent Zai of the Imperial Frigate Lynx is tasked with her rescue.
Separated by light years, bound by an unlikely love, Zai and pacifist Senator Nara Oxham must both face the challenge of the Rix, and both will hold the fate of the empire in their hands.
Not a newcomer to Westerfeld’s work, I found myself increasingly intrigued with how he put his spin on science fiction. As he departed from success in young adult literature, I found his writing to truly flex, having ups and downs. Not uncommon, Westerfeld did not push the boundaries of censorship, instead he capitalized on making The Risen Empire about something more. While concepts of life and death are key themes in science fiction, I occasionally found Westerfeld’s in your face approach to be unsettling. Throughout the plot, the large question of life extension is consistently pushed, unfortunately to what I felt was an unnecessary degree. The balance between philosophy and world lore was consistently blurred; the prose, at times, seemingly preachy. These larger themes were not entirely new to Westerfeld’s work, I merely felt that he missed the mark with the overall balance.
The other notable change for me was that Westerfeld’s style of switching character perspective also didn’t entirely work in The Risen Empire In the first portions of the book, his pace feels alarmingly fast, switching between points of view every one and a half pages or so. Instead of painting a picture of a larger scene, the execution felt muddled. Though each change was marked with the title/position of the character, it felt difficult to truly know any of the characters. Part way through reading I tried to recall characters that stood out to me and I could recall only positions and banal facts like the Doctor who kept whining about the gross strawberry flavored inhalant that was life saving. Fortunately, Westerfeld started to expand on character thoughts and it became more obvious who the protagonists were. That being said, even in these longer and more insightful chapters, Westerfeld’s characters are fairly forgettable. Perhaps purposely, it is easy to identify an individual simply by their position and not by any remarkable attributes. This only helped to encourage the lecturing tone.
By no means is The Risen Empire a bad book. Westerfeld has well rounded story lore and a true understanding of power infrastructures. He expertly shows the struggle of the politician who finds herself not having as much power as she thought and in contrast the lifelong soldier who finds his power after feeling like a mere pawn. The overall mission objective though sometimes diluted, is still a quite interesting one. In the quest, Westerfeld beautifully captures the themes he has been playing at and it is here where you find the most compelling portions.
As a gamer and action movie lover, I approached The Risen Empire thinking that it would be a thrilling story of epic battles and life on the spacefront. Instead, I found a book that is simply about life themes and relationships. This is neither good nor bad but simply unexpected. It certainly made me realize I shouldn’t have judged the book by the cover. For a story revolving around relationships and feelings, I found Westerfeld to forget about the most important one- reader to book. I was occasionally entertained but never once immersed, at no time did I find myself emotionally invested in any character, or more importantly, their quest. The Risen Empire has its merits but may not be for everyone as it just wasn’t a book for me.
