Culture Shock

The Empire's Corps, Book 13

By: Christopher G. Nuttall

Narrated by: Jeffrey Kafer

Arthur's Seat had never sought a galactic role. A relatively new colony world, a mere 300 years old, the planet was always isolated from the galactic mainstream. But with the Empire crumbling after the fall of Earth and other planets taking advantage of the chaos to make their own bids for power, Arthur's Seat suddenly finds itself playing host to tens of thousands of unwanted immigrants, refugees who have been kicked off countless other worlds.

But as the planetary government struggles to integrate the newcomers, powerful factions plot to take advantage of the situation, and the refugees struggle to carve out a place for themselves, it becomes clear that the entire planet is on the verge of anarchy...and outright civil war may not be far away.

©2016 Christopher G. Nuttall (P)2017 Podium Publishing

Interesting

The characters and story line of the Empire’s Corp series do not appear in book 13. Not sure if Nuttall is providing background material which will merge with his next book in the series.

Arthur’s Seat is a relatively new colony world. With the crumbling of the Empire, the Imperial Navy is bringing fifty thousand unwanted immigrants/refugees to Arthur’s Seat. The story is the conflict between refugees and the planet inhabitants. The characters are interesting and the storyline is plausible considering the collapsing of the Empire. The refugees are the Forsakers, a religious group sort of like the Amish. Nuttall then explores racism and religious intolerance. The book is well written.

The book is 12 hours long. Jeffrey Kafer does an excellent job narrating the book. Kafer has narrated all the books in the Empire’s Corp series. Kafer is a multi-award winning audiobook narrator.

Meh

Another one-off story that could easily be skipped. A lot of familiar characters and themes as some of the other non-corps stories. The bully, the wimp, the girl in between them, and the sociology story of groups forced to live in the post-earth environment.

Different from the rest but great.

Great performance as usual. A great take on a very relevant issue through a scifi lens.

Similar to the muslim problem!

See for your self. When you get thousands of people forced on you that don't care about your laws and customs. A good listen!

Disapointed

Not bad, but not as good as the previous books in the series. Nothing about the corps mentioned.

My least favorite of the Empire corps book

Sorry but it was slow slow slow and the political portion this novel was a bit one sided and ham handed. I love the rest of this series though and would recommend any other book as a great listen

No Space Battles...

In the Empire's Corps series, this book is more like "Reality Check" and less like the other books in this series. More drama and politics than space and ground battles that I really loved in the other books. I think most people can skip this book entirely and still be ok.

discussion of timely issues

Unwanted refugees are thrust upon a peaceful planet society and conflict breaks out. What keeps this from being too too parallel to today's Muslim immigration issue is that the people were forced to leave their homes and relocate to this place. They are not trying to sneak in and commit acts of terror. They do expect to live as they have done, even though their lifestyle is diametrically opposed to that of the locals. There is a hint of powerful people making a land grab for the unspecified resources of their original home world, thus the resettlement. Also, the immigrants could just as well be Mormon or Amish as Muslim. The creed is not specific to any of these groups; it attempts to incorporate aspects of many different cultures.

So the newcomers clash with the original settlers, and there are discussions on both sides about how each sees the issues. Although Nuttal's own political leanings do show through here, to be fair, he has done a good job balancing the arguments on both sides.

If you want to hear a novel based on the conflicts between cultures that we are seeing in the news every day, then this is that novel.

Jeffrey Kafer reads well enough, but he has little concept of contrast emphasis. He fails to place the correct emphasis in such sentences as "John ran to school while Mary rode her bike," or "John likes ice cream. Mary likes cake." He makes it sound as if the two parts are unrelated. There was also the unfortunate appearance of the non-word "swang;" but that's probably an author's error (although not isolated), not the narrator's.

It's not a happy book, but it does give us a further look into the fall of the Empire. I just wish Nuttle would hurry up and get back to Stalker and Avalon and take down General Singh.

As subtle as a sledgehammer

But extremely plausible. We always seem to think that because someone is different doesn't make them worse, it's amazing how deluded people can be.

Culture is one of those things that are completely not open to interpretation or negotiation. We never seem to realIze that we all have a culture, the west is not immune or exempt from that. Our culture is liberal democracy that enshrines the rights of the individual above that of a state or belief. I don't think anyone who has never left their culture can understand how foreign this is in other parts of the world... They simply think that other cultures are equal but different or that people will adapt to our culture overnight. It takes GENERATIONS and a lot of pain.

It's scary how some can be blind to this and especially how some may think the law is subjective. We in the West are in a dangerous position, we are more than likely over a tipping point which may lead to violence at best and the collapse of our culture at worst. It's not hyperbole and we need to discuss it rather than hiding from it.

This may be one book too many

I've listened to each book in the series and enjoyed most. This book discusses an interesting problem, but belongs in another series than the EMPIRE'S CORPS. A series relating to specific problems such as cultural misunderstandings would be a powerful starting point for similar idea exchanges based on today's conflicts.