Empire of the Ants

Don't kill any more ants!!
This book is worth learning French to read. Honestly. It had me worrying for the fate of an ant by page 40! Fascinating swap of perspectives, and hair-raising cliff-hanger ending. I have the 3rd book in this trilogy, but am anxiously waiting to get the 2nd from the library!

Ne tuez plus de fourmis !
Ce livre vaut la peine d'apprendre le français pour le lire. Vraiment. Il m'a fait soucier pour le destin d'une fourmi avant la 40e page ! Changement impressionnant de points de vues et fin incroyable. J'ai déjà le 3e tome mais j’attends avec impatience le 2e de la bibliothèque !

ShiraDest
22 Decembre, 12015 HE

I already like books about animal societies, so I guess I'm biased. You could tell he'd done some research (I did a bit on ants myself a few years ago) which meant that though it had the feeling of magical realism, a lot of the details were right.

The best parts of it were definitely the sections following the ants. They felt like a proper mystery-adventure and I was excited to see what happened next. The ant facts didn't feel superfluous or crowbarred in to the text.

I wasn't so keen on the way individual ants had intelligence, as my understanding was that they have more of a swarm intelligence. I thought that was anthropomorphising unnecessarily but I understand that it advanced the plot.

The whole story with the humans and the cellar show more was just... bizarre. I'm not sure how I feel about that.

Some of the "insights" from Edmond Wells and his Encyclopaedia were quite tired, and bordering on racist I thought. Comparing the Japanese to insects? Check. Shallow anthropological observations about caste in Hindu society? Check. Honestly humans are a separate topic I would expect the same level of research in to write anything profound. (Werber spent 15 years researching ants as a hobby.)

There were a couple of quibbles I had with the misuse of words - calling the venomous moth Zygaena a butterfly. (Still amazed at the fact of there *being* venomous moths!) Mixing up a few biological terms which aren't interchangeable (I didn't mark where he or the translator did that, but I'm sure it would be easy for others to spot). These may have been mistakes in translation rather than errors from Werber himself.

Apparently this book is well known in France. I had never heard of it. It was given to me as a gift after a lengthy explanation of how amazing it was (and if I read it as a child I'm sure it would have changed my life too). It's worth reading and I'm sure older kids would love it. show less

Don't kill any more ants!!
This book is worth learning French to read. Honestly. It had me worrying for the fate of an ant by page 40! Fascinating swap of perspectives, and hair-raising cliff-hanger ending. I have the 3rd book in this trilogy, but am anxiously waiting to get the 2nd from the library!

Ne tuez plus de fourmis !
Ce livre vaut la peine d'apprendre le français pour le lire. Vraiment. Il m'a fait soucier pour le destin d'une fourmi avant la 40e page ! Changement impressionnant de points de vues et fin incroyable. J'ai déjà le 3e tome mais j’attends avec impatience le 2e de la bibliothèque !

ShiraDest
22 Decembre, 12015 HE

O autor não faz propriamente divulgação científica, nem ficção científica. Cria uma narrativa de ficção baseada em ciência, numa mistura que prende a leitura. Aprende-se muito sobre formigas, com trechos fascinantes e alguns assustadores. Mas os humanos da história protagonizam um desfecho que poderia ser mais bem elaborado.

If you read this book, you will never look at an ant in the same way. You will also learn a lot about these tiny creatures (and perhaps more than you want to know). When Werber endows his tiny creatures with a particular kind of intelligence, he also gives them an importance they richly deserve (despite the fact that they can be pesky creatures).

An exciting, "political" fantasy thriller. I haven't read an adventure starring ants before, so their part of the story was great fun to follow. For a while I even wished that ants were like this in real life. The main theme in this book seems to be comparison between humans and ants. The points to make are obvious (community and castes vs. individuality), and they're overdone a bit. This is not written for kids, is it?

I liked the description of battles and warfare, the evolution of weaponry, and how the ant colonies constantly developed by responding to threats.

What I didn't like was basically the whole human side of the story. It was badly written throughout, and the ending was a bit childish. On the other hand, Werber's writing show more wasn't that great in the ant side either. There were a lot of inconsequential encounters and needless details. show less

This book is interesting if you are interested in ants and fiction. It is a strange combination and probably not for everyone.
I enjoyed it anyway. It does show an unusual perspective from within ants nests as well as from outside and combines the two in a mysterious way. Enjoy the journey. It could win a nomination for best leading ant award!