Mecha Samurai Empire

This review is based on an ARC given to me for free by the publisher Ace via Netgalley. The book is slated for release on September 18, 2018.

If there is one thing that Mecha Samurai Empire shares with United States of Japan, though, it???s the themes of the story. Both novels are about seeing the truth through the smokescreen of propaganda, and about taking action against an oppressive regime. The difference comes from the perspectives of the characters involved. In United States of Japan, the characters are government employees who realise that the system they serve is utterly broken, and in order for that system to change they need to take action. They also have an external opponent in the form of a terrorist group called the George Washingtons, but that enemy does not play as significant a role as the enemy within, so to speak.

In Mecha Samurai Empire, it???s different in that it is about a group of young people who realise that they face not only the threat of an outside enemy, that their own government might be an enemy as well. In a way, they are fighting a war on two fronts ??? and in doing so, many of them will die for a government that does not really care for them anyway. This is something Mac and his friends realise, and then try to change in their own way. Whether or not they succeed is uncertain, because by the end of the novel it is clear that this is only the beginning, and that things are only just getting started.