Empire of the Ants

Bernard Werber's debut novel is a genuinely inventive piece of science fiction that sold over two million copies for good reason. The alternating storyline — one following a human family drawn toward a forbidden cellar in a Paris apartment, the other tracking a young ant investigating a threat to her Formica rufa colony — is ambitious and largely succeeds, grounded in real entomological research. The human plot is thinner than the ant narrative, but the collision of the two storylines is satisfying. Parents and faith-family readers should know this is firmly adult territory: ant battle sequences are described as more graphic than a World War II film, and the text contains explicit sexual content. Older readers who can handle that will find something genuinely original here.