3 out of 4 stars
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Empire Man by Michael Dirubio is a space opera novel. Space opera is a subgenre of science fiction. This book can also be said to be a science fiction fantasy. It was self-published on November 24, 2015. It has 793 standard pages, which is double the size of a normal size novel, and deals with issues of space warfare, interplanetary battles, interplanetary politics, romance, risk-taking adventures, and espionage.
The strapline on the book cover reads,
Humanity’s destiny is truly in the stars as the story starts in the distant future, at the start of a new galactic year by the standard calendar, where man has built giant cities in space, colonized planets, even met the aliens and successfully moved through the traversable wormholes. President Cooper Carlyle, the leader of the three Alpha planets, has traveled great distances through space to move the Alpha Confederation capital from Proxima to Terra Prime, and also to be in a strategic position for war.Humanity’s destiny is in the stars.
As a countermeasure, the Royal family begins to rally their interstellar weaponry and resources. Could this be the beginning of interplanetary doom? The young ensigns, Rita and Riggs, do not care much about the Tau Empire, the home 16 billion souls, or Emperor Paul Yang, the head of the largest corporation in human history, or anything for that matter. They only care about the revealed aliens and exploring new worlds, but will they be transformed with what is coming?
You don’t have to be versed in quantum theory or know anything about special relativity to understand and enjoy this book. That being said, you would, however, have to pass through the space jargon that the author has made uncomplicated for the reader.
Once you get past the technical jargon, a fantasy world of the universe and the four alien species open up to you. These four alien species are the Thream who are the most human like, the Seepled who are a total mystery to the humans, the Trelians, and the Griz! Thl? It seems the employ of good humor, or at least undercurrents of it, is almost a prerequisite of a good book, and this book has a fair share of it.
What I did not like about this book was the length of the book. It would have been more appealing if it would have been shorter and therefore attracted a wider audience while still remaining relevant and powerful. The technical talk was another issue that, although made simpler by the author and necessary for the building of the dense plot, would further derail the reading process.
The story had a few editing issues that were unforgivable, for example, the misspellings, “…only three centimeters shorted [shorter] than Stanton,” omissions, “…the leadership would go [to] the clan,” the usual misplacing of “then” in the place of “than,” and a multitude of punctuation errors. I give this book a rating of 3 out of 4 stars because of too much usage of technical terms that could have been reduced to a minimum, and the editing issues. I recommend it to the readers that love science fiction fantasy and a thick plot.
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Empire Man
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, but it took a little out of me; and brought in a lot! 
