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Anonymous
Posted June 12, 2006
Amazing for a 15-year-old
I think this book is very good, considering it was written by a fifteen year-old who did not get the novel published until he became a reporter. The reason for the abrupt ending is that there are two sequels (I'm not sure they were published in English). Wording is sometimes strange due to direct translations. A great read (especially in French)!
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Anonymous
Posted May 31, 2005
Surprisingly believable - too believable~!
I remember my mom and sister reading the book years ago. I can read anything, but please, no insects. I hate ANTS!!!! So why read a book about them?? But somehow, fate led me to read this book, and I regret that I haven't done it sooner. I'm not a biologist so I don't know, but reading the ants' kingdom part of the book was extremely facsinating and even made me google 'russet ants.' I too had the old idea that ant colonies were strict totalitarian, so the idea that the queen 'thinks' up of projects was truly shocking. But more than ever, the part that stays in my head is an excerpt from the speech against selling ant colonies in supermarkets. The eccentric uncle talks about how each child is given the ability to play god, and the power vested in them can be easily abused. After playing Sim City and Sims and such, and of course watching the movie Matrix, that thought had often come up in my head. But the analogy of Noah's Ark being an 'accidental' pouring of water into an ant farm made me gasp. What if.... what if.... This is so far the best book I ever read.
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Anonymous
Posted August 2, 2003
one of the best books i've read...perhaps it is the best
simply amazing...Empire of the Ants is very hard to put down - I was so into it I read the entire book in one day. this book deserves 20 stars !!! you'll truly regret not reading it.
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Anonymous
Posted May 19, 2002
Idea has potential, but story is poorly written
The fictional book Empire of the Ants was written by Bernard Werber and contains two stories: the ants and the humans. Neither is good enough to make this book worth reading. The ant part of this book tells a story from the point of view of ants. It starts out with a male ant, who when gathering food for his colony after hibernating for the winter discovers a 'secret weapon' which kills a handful of ants. The male ant recruits a few other ants in order to help find out more about the 'secret weapon,' who become the main characters in the story. The ants have to deal with colony conspiracies, predators, and enemy ant colonies. The human part of the story is about Jonathan, his wife, and his son, who inherit a house from his uncle Edmond, a scientist who had a very strong interest in ants. Jonathan was warned by his uncle not to go in the basement, but he does anyways. The author of this book gives too much credit to intelligence and creativity of ants, where the credit really belongs to ant evolution. He tries to make the ants too human-like to be believable. I found the plot of the ant story to be boring. The author also has some of his biology wrong. As far as I know, male ants rarely work in order to preserve themselves for mating. In this book, the first ant character presented, a male, acts as a temperature messenger (warms up the colony), and goes out of the nest to retrieve food. In another instance, a bat gets caught in the boy's hair, and sucks some of his blood. Sorry - that doesn't happen. Bats don't get caught in people's hair. Only vampire bats suck blood, but rarely human blood, and only while the victim is sleeping. Bats (including vampire bats) are generally petrified of humans. The author did not do his research. The human characters in this story are not developed enough. I just didn't care about them. They don't act realistically either. The human story is dull. Most of the story is about people going down in the basement and never coming back, and then when we find out why, the reason turns out to be very unbelievable. The concept of Empire of the Ants has potential, but the story is written too poorly. I wouldn't recommend this book.
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Anonymous
Posted June 27, 2002
MUST READ!!! EXTRAORDINARY!!!
This book is one of my favorite books i've ever read. Really informative and intellectual work of Bernard Werber. I love all the other works of his, unfortunately not available in English. (I read those in Korean) I highly recommend this book to everyone!!!
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Anonymous
Posted January 5, 2002
Empire of the Ants
Hey i am only 13 but i loved this book! I dont normally get a chance to read throughout the day.. but i could not put this book down! it was amazing.. his text placement was incredible, as the conversations went directly from Humans to Ants, without creating new chapters! anywayz.. if you havent read this book.. YOU SHOULD! ~*Olivia*~
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Anonymous
Posted November 28, 2000
Great Book
This was a great book and I highly recomend it
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Anonymous
Posted August 12, 2000
Extraordinary!
Werber has a very vivid imagination and uses it to raise questions that you rarely think of. Once the questions are raised, he gives his own answers, dazzling. The ants are a civilization that you ignore because you never see them, but Werber opens your eyes on them. They are there, by billions, working, mating, fighting, breeding, observing the humans... A captivating world that cannot leave you indifferent...
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