Annie Douglass Lima
Auteur van Prince of Alasia
Werken van Annie Douglass Lima
The Gladiator and the Guard 3 exemplaren
Tagged
Algemene kennis
- Geslacht
- female
Leden
Besprekingen
Statistieken
- Werken
- 11
- Leden
- 54
- Populariteit
- #299,230
- Waardering
- 4.6
- Besprekingen
- 8
- ISBNs
- 5
The book begins with a pair of paper clippers and a successful escape from a house. Bensin is 14 years old, blond with blue eyes and was born into slavery through no fault of his own or his parents. His ancestral country lost a civil war against invasion from the powerful Krillonian Empire that spans 3 continents (the book reminded me of the brutality seen in that anime Code Geass), and thousands of his people were enslaved as a warning.
Not that history lessons mattered to Bensin at the time. His somewhat ruthless owners are planning on taking his innocent little sister Ellie to have the slave office place her very first metallic collar on her neck, forever branding her as a slave and seemingly impossible to remove without special equipment. His hopes of saving the innocent 5 year old girl from a life of abuse and potential sex slavery were slipping away. He did the only thing any overprotective older sibling could do at the time and it was to escape and send her to a police station under the guise that she is an orphan.
Things don't go very well and both of them are captured by an honest cop named Shigo. While Ellie only gets a warning, Bensin endures another lashing as punishment for a second failed escape. After feeling sorrow for Bensin's good intentions, he reveals to him that his sister's data was set up in the computer system the day she was born and his plan was going to fail anyways.
Devastated that he is going to fail a promise he made to his deceased mother, his owner decides to sell him to a man that is falling under duress. Steene is left nearly penniless from a bitter divorce and wallowing in self pity (not to mention he stepped on a cockroaches among the endless pizza boxes at his new bachelor pad). Horrified that his job gave the employee award of the year and his best martial arts student to his arch rival Markus, he stumbles upon Bensin's classified ad and is stunned that he's skilled in cavvara shil. Curious, he decides to test Bensin's skills in the front lawn and purchases him that very day.
Bensin's life begins to change for the better when he realizes Steene doesn't mistreat him and begins to train him to become a national champion in his beloved sport, but he is depressed that he has been separated from his sister. The clock begins to tick and he needs to make enough money to liberate Ellie before her owners grow tired of her and sell her off.
The book drags you inside this twisted world where an entire nation finds slavery to be both convenient and socially acceptable. People have no qualms that innocent slaves can be framed and given the death penalty. Children are sold to rapists, whipped, mocked and even murdered. Bensin finds the collar dangling on his neck to be inconvenient at times and you can feel his short lived joy when he regains full movement of his neck albeit for a brief moment when the slave office changes the name of his owner on his collar. But he seems to accept this life as depressing as it may seem. Vastly more worrying is the fact that some slaves in the story were born free and due to crimes comitted by their immediate family, they are auctioned themselves.
The story moves at a steady pace and you get to enjoy the personalities of every major character. Some characters are freemen that dislike slavery and would like to improve things in their own little way and we have antagonists that ridicule Bensin such as his arch-nemesis during competitions Jaycee.
The pinnacle of the story kept me reading nonstop until I finished the book almost immediately. It had a fulfilling ending and I will definitely read the sequels very soon. If there is any thing missing in the story, it's the utter lack of romance, but it features a different kind of sibling love that drives the story forward.
Definitely worth your time.… (meer)