I've seen this book bouncing around the
upper ends of the rankings for the last few days, and the description
was appealing enough to convince me to buy it. I'll get the technical
side of the review out of the way quickly; the formatting was fine,
no problems at all that I could see, and certainly no typos or errors
made themselves apparent when I was reading, so a good, professional
book. (I suppose at this point I should clarify that I read the
Kindle copy; I presume the paperback version is similar.)
Growing up, one of my favourite authors
was Robert Heinlein, and I still have a strong regard for his work;
oddly, one of the books I came too latest, simply because I didn't
come across it for a long time, was 'Citizen of the Galaxy', where an
ex-beggar from a far-off world, sold into slavery as a child, turns
out to be the heir to a massive fortune back on Earth. It's an
excellent book, and I can recommend it, and I got strong vibes along
those lines here. I'm not for a second saying that it copies the
story, in fact – I actually preferred this version of the tale. I'm
not going to give any spoilers here, just to say that it covers the
story of a slave who is rescued by the navy, and ultimately helps
start turn the tables on her captors.
This one started dark and stayed there.
The question of why a technologically advanced culture would require
slaves is an age-old one, and there are only two real reasons – for
some sort of special technical skill or ability, or for sex. And it
is the latter one that is dealt with here with regards to the primary
character, and dealt with very well indeed. It's the characters that
really grip here; the setting has obviously been well thought
through, and the military elements are realistic-sounding enough to
keep the sense of setting and fiction; I was drawn in very nicely.
The story has some good twists and turns to it, and there is a nice,
satisfactory ending that sets up for a sequel. A sequel I am
definitely intending to buy, so I suppose I can't say any more than
that.
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