Rating: 
Summary: This Brings Me Back to Fiction---I Loved It!
Review: Most of what I read is non-fiction and I have not read a good, satisfying novel in a long, long time so "the Emperor" is my return to fiction and I loved it! So much so that my daughters and I have chosen it as the first book for our mother-daughter book club. It was escapist reading and that is exactly what I wanted it to be. The intelligence and the rhythm of the text just felt so good to me. I wish it had been a little shorter but I still thoroughly enjoyed it. I found myself wanting to race past some of the descriptive passages later in the story because they did get to be a little laborous but even in the midst of them, I just enjoyed the fun of the language and I stayed with it, not wanting to miss anything. This book was what I thought contemporary fiction could not be for me--intelligent and diversionary, not dark or disappointing but thoroughly engrossing and above all for me, satisfying and good to the last drop!
Rating:
Summary: A Brilliant Mind, But...
Review: I have heard Stephen Carter speak, so I came to this novel knowing it likely would be thought-provoking and rewarding. My expectations were well satisfied, but I was surprised that his editor didn't challenge him on things like overuse of some metaphors (such as "chewing on cotton"--a 650-page novel probably can sustain two appearances, but not more...), providing more reminders of who his myriads of characters were, and help with a few credibility gaps in the plot, particularly toward the end (why on earth could Misha not search his own attic until a hurricane hit, speaking of which, if he was out in the storm himself, any tail worth his/her salt wouldn't be giving up either...). Concerning length, if every sentence, scene, had been perfect (or nearly so!), readers would enthusiastically stay with him till the last page. But, all in all, my vote is that it is a worthwhile read and a great discussion-group novel.
Rating:
Summary: A Good Read
Review: I've not read all of the 160-plus reviews, but as an avid reader, I found this fascinating. Took me 5 days to read - I can't understand why it would take anyone weeks to finish because it's a real page turner. Carter is a superb dialog writer. He needs a better editor, but he has produced a genuine, fascinating story - far superior to Grisham, Turow or others he's compared to. So it's not perfect - it's a great read.
Rating: 
Summary: King of Kings
Review: The most interesting story in "The Emperor of Ocean Park," the big-buzz debut thriller by Stephen L. Carter, takes place before the book opens. It concerns Judge Oliver Garland, who in his long career on the bench shifted from a Thurgood Marshall liberal to a Clarence Thomas conservative, suffered when his teen-aged daughter was killed by a hit-and-run driver, and was rejected for a seat on the Supreme Court when he was caught lying about his friendship with the gangster Jack Ziegler. Carter's book opens with the Judge -- as he is known even by his children --found dead in his study from a heart attack. His son, law school professor Talcott Garland, learns at the funeral that the Judge had made "arrangements" of some kind before he died. Clues surface: a pawn from the Judge's chess set is delivered to him, and Talcott receives a message that "Angela's boyfriend" contains the key to the arrangements. Talcott is understandably mystified by all this. Unfortunately for him, other people are also interested in these arrangements, including Ziegler, and while he promises to protect the family until they are found, Talcott does not trust him, especially after he is stalked and attacked. Surviving long enough to learn what the Judge was up to provides the Macguffin behind this densely written 657-page thriller. As a professor of law at Yale and the author of several best-selling and well-received non-fiction books, Carter sets the story in his world, and he describes the world of the black upper-class with the nuanced eye of an anthropologist. It is a land separate but equal from what Talcott repeatedly calls "the paler nation." It is a world where the children go to Jack and Jill, grow up to attend Howard University, enter politics, the media or finance, vacation on Martha's Vineyard and hold season tickets to Redskins games. The world of wealth, privilege and power is a staple of political thrillers, but seeing it through a black man's eyes give it an unusual freshness. Carter also infuses the story with themes drawn from his non-fiction books. Talcott is a Christian who is challenged to stay true to his faith; a teacher concerned with the proper education of his students and surviving the backstabbing found in academia; a father looking back at his relationship with the Judge and determined not to repeat it with his son; and a husband unable to control his suspicions about his wife's fidelity. These scenes, described by Carter's polished, measured sentences, make up the bulk of the book. The rest is thriller filler, complete with car chases, gunplay, late-night warnings phoned in and cat-and-mouse games with the villains and the police. Be warned: there are two Carters in this book. One is the social observer who sees a cocky student as "young, white, confident, foolish, skinny, sullen, multiply pierced, bejeweled, dressed in grunge, cornsilk hair in a ponytail, utterly the cynical conformist, although he thinks he is an iconoclast." The other delivers clumsy if-I-had-but-known foreshadowings, and give the gangster lines like "I have asked my question. I have delivered my warning. I have done what I came to do." "Emperor" goes out of its way to make it a tough book to like. The thriller elements don't thrill. Watching the slow-motion disintegration of Talcott's marriage provides more interest than a car chase. Worse, the characters are annoying. Talcott is a self-loathing and humorless drip whose introspective monologues give him an unearned gravity. His wife, a beautiful, ambitious attorney angling for a seat on the court of appeals, is a harridan and a viper. The rest of the family and the other characters range from the delusional to the unpleasant. Balanced against that is the prose, the observations, and the obvious intelligence behind it all. You want to root for Carter to succeed, and when he tells us in drips and drabs, the story of a judge drawn to an evil act and its soul-corroding effect on even the innocent and unknowing, you get the payoff of the novel that's swaddled within
Rating:
Summary: I've Read Better
Review: This novel starts out interestingly but does meander. And a note about the supposed upper classness of the family. How is it that a federal judge, on the salary federal judges are paid, can be portrayed as the pillar of an upper class community? The implication given in this book is that the patriarch at the center of "The Emperor..." sits at the summit among the wealthiest and most prestigious African Americans. But the last time I checked the salaries of federal judges, they made out no better than primary care physicians and associates at the most prestigious law firms. The same with law professors. So I'm at a loss for how this family can be portrayed as so upper class. In real life many African American families would be wealthier and hardly consider a federal judge the pillar of their summer resort community. He would certainly be well respected, but not the creme' de la creme' (remember elder statesman Thurgood Marshall, African American Supreme Court justice? He ranked higher than a federal judge). That distinction would go to actual African American millionaires (to those who keep insisting that they never knew the world Carter is portraying here exists, yes, there are some African American millionaires, even old money families). Also, like others here have stated, the hype surrounding this novel is a textbook example of how the publicity machine in the major publishing industry operates. Give an author $4 million and, miraculously, once the book is published a front page review appears in the NYT Book Review, and it will be featured on all the major network hype programs. And, no matter the quality of the book, it will definitely be either a good review, or so broad in papering over weaknesses ("the author shows promise for the future...") to ensure that the major publishing house earns back its advance. There have been other novels this summer at least as good or better than this one. Yet they didn't get similar coverage in the press because the authors didn't receive the same size advance that had to be earned back by the publisher. Yet we call ours a nation of equal opportunity for all where if you put in the talent and hard work you will receive your just reward? The truth is, EVERYTHING is political and/or governed by the almighty dollar. The only good thing to come of the hype surrounding this book is proof that the literary publicity machine is an equal opportunity hyper when the dollars needed to be recovered are high enough. It's willing to kick into gear regardless of the race of the characters in the book. But as far as the fairness of what gets hyped is concerned, someone please tell me again: What democratic society in which talent is the sole determinant of who makes it, is the one we're supposed to be defending against terrorists? Where is that place I was told about that I lived in as a child, but as a grown-up have yet to discover? I'm still trying to locate it.
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing Read
Review: I guess I'm definitely in the minority on this one but I found this book quite boring. After wading through all of Carter's repetitious descriptions and finding that I still really didn't care about any of the book's main characters, I have to say that the book was a pretty bland experience for me. If something could be said in twenty-five words, Carter takes three times that many words to express himself. Maybe this IS his first novel but what was the editor doing? I will say that the book picked up toward the end but since it was already totally off the screen for me, I finally just kept reading to get the book finished. I don't think I'll ever buy another book by this author. The social mileu was somewhat interesting but when you never really develop any empathy for any of the main characters, it can be hard going. I couldn't even feel empathy for Talcott (Misha) since he was so hopelessly and consistently besotted with that wife (Kimmer) who had so few redeeming qualtites. A lot of the people in the book were of "color" but the book remained much like watching a poorly lit black and white B or C movie. I really don't understand all the kudos this book has earned. Am I alone in my less than glowing critique of THE EMPEROR OF OCEAN PARK?
Rating:
Summary: Urgh
Review: I bought this book on CD because it had received so much acclaim this past Summer. My husband and I listened to it on a long drive and were screaming by the end for it to just end. the only reason I gave it two stars is that something, and I have no idea what, compelled us to listen until the end. Maybe it was the cost of the CD? Regardless, we could not stand any of the characters and could not have cared less what happened to them or whether or not the alleged murder mystery was a murder or not? We kept waiting for something to happen, and to the bitter end, nothing interesting did. The best thing aside from that it did finally end, was the voice of the reader. He did a great job reading this otherwise unsatisfying story. The relationships amongst the characters were one dimensional at best. The protagonist kept talking about his solitary lifestyle, and his disappointments in life and I could not comprehend how if all of the characters were similar, the reader was supposed to care what happened to them? If you want a dark, depressing, and unsatisfying read with a goose chase of a mystery that you wish would just end -- go for it. But you're better off with a Dennis Lehane, a Ken Follett, or Clive Cussler.
Rating:
Summary: To Tell or Not
Review: Carter is bright and interesting for the most, but the book is overlong. About 500 pages in, one wonders why Carter does not get on with it.
But having struggled through the whole thing, one wonders now that Talcott has finally unlocked the deep secret of his father's career, whether or not he should have revealed it?
What's the consensus out there???
Rating: 
Summary: Not a likeable - or interesting - character in sight
Review: What a worm's eye-view of the world. The characters in this book - all of them - are contemptible human beings, impossible to care about. And those names! "Kimmer" - why didn't he just call her Muffy or Bitsy or Lilibet? And "Misha"? How pretentious can we get here? What a twee name for the protagonist. As a previous reviewer remarked, this book seems to be the unfortunate offspring of a union between an unbridled ego and a publisher desperate for the all-or-nothing blockbuster. And how condescending and insulting the promotional campaign was - "Gee, whiz, you mean there's actually been this black upper middle class, right under our noses for the last hundred or so years?" The hype surrounding this windy, overlong tome has been an insult to the meanest intelligence.
Rating:
Summary: starts well, then fizzles
Review: I really liked the beginning of this book. It's tight, interesting, and different, full of insights into worlds I don't know anything about, like the African American middle class -- or, as Carter puts it, "the darker nation" (white people belong to "the paler nation"), conservative politics, academic politics, and government bureaucracy. He also writes about family loyalty and honesty. When Carter is writing about politics, the darker/paler national divide, and college hierarchies, I believe him. But when he turns to government crime and secret organizations, I don't. This might be because after the first four chapters, there's a pretty startling drop off in writing quality. For instance, we jump back and forth in time, for no real reason that I can see, until the narrative gets totally scrambled. Also, the narrator starts to repeat himself. He keeps noticing the same things, wishing the same wishes, feeling the same feelings. Just about every male character, for instance, gets described in terms of his muscle tone -- again for no reason I could see, not one linked to the plot or theme of the novel anyhow. It's hard to tell when something's important (or if it's happening before or after something else we've just learned). About halfway through I started to skim. The plot got pretty bizarre, but the marriage and family stuff worked most of the time (except for those times they were tweaked out of shape to fit in with the assassins and government secrets). This would have been a good book about the pressure of upper middle class life: father/son relationships, sibling expectations, honesty in marriage, and work. It's just not a very believable story. Read the first half, forget the rest.
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