Saturday, November 5, 2016

The Shackled Scribes

Author Lars Teeney gave me an e-copy of The Shackled Scribes for review.

Having read and enjoyed two other books by Lars Teeney (both Apostates books), I was quite surprised by The Shackled Scribes. It was not the Lars Teeney I was expecting; talk about changing up your style-Whew!

The Shackled Scribes is at once, serious fantasy and demented dystopia. It rates a 12 on the 10 point "EWWW!" scale. It is a tale of slaves, masters, and how symbiotic this arrangement can be.

The Shackled Scribes does not spend much time moralizing on the rightness or wrongness of the slave/master situation, or the addiction used to keep the slaves willingly subjugated (therein lies the EWWW factor). It is what it is for the most part.

In an interesting twist, the heroine of the story (at least in my mind) does not get all that much print. She has a major impact on the story line but does not spend that much time as the focus of the book. Different, but I found it a great way to tell her story.

The society is as dystopic as they come, but very few of the participants have any real problem with that. This is another departure from the main stream of the genre. Usually there is a large segment of the society that has been marginalized/oppressed/victimized and are active in their opposition to the ruling class. Not so here.

The Shackled Scribes by Lars Teeney shows what a talented writer (though fans of The Apostates already know this) our author is: to write something so totally different from his usual work. If I wore one, my hat would be off to him.

Little sex, some violence (not particularly graphic), lots of story, mega ewww. The Shackled Scribes is truly unlike any other book I have read, and I read a lot. If you can handle being grossed out a bit, I think you will agree with me. Enjoy!

Mike

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