B. C. Roger

This novella is surely an interesting read! I didn't quite know what to expect when I read it because the intro doesn't offer a lot of hints about the full story as such.

Imagine a world with 4 intelligent humanoid species living together. The most influential politically speaking is the Torvans which are a sort of humanoid cats. They live in their very own large continent and have enslaved humans and two additional humanoid feline races: smaller ones that I tried to imagine they looked like ocelots called Pyrwondu and large ones that resembled jaguars called Maruvans.

There is a second small continent filled with free humans with a lot of social instability problems as a result of liberating their slaves and a third continent with a lot of military might inhabited by mind reading humanoid lizards called Srilissi. The Torvans were in a very long war with the Srilissi (I'll presume they want to expand their empire and enslave more people) that ended in a sort of armistice prior to the events of the book and there is a very tense peace that a lot of influential Torvans are willing to throw away.

The main character of the book is a teenage human slave named Miona. She was born into the politically powerful Fortvallor family and owned by a war hero named Franken who operates the daily operations of the family estate but always under the blessing of his strict mother Rittmarten. We really don't get much of a chance to know him all that well. He treats Miona pretty well considering her situation, and even tolerates hearing how obnoxiously rude she is when they are together, but he is adamant in neither buying her freedom or letting her train to become a chauffeur which is her dream job. He has sent her a few months before the beginning of the story to a private boarding school for elite families called Kandillohr where despite showing a genuine interest in her well-being by attending a prestigious school that has other slave students, Miona is forced to take a lot of science classes she dislikes among a classroom filled with the most petulant upper society freeborn you could ever imagine. Chances are she would be a lot happier at school if she could take some slave courses like gardening to avoid feeling so alienated in a country where even freeborn humans are mistreated quite severely, which partially explains why she gets into so much trouble.

One thing that will be apparent quickly in this book is that a gigantic chunk of the story is not focused on the world building or in the political scheming outside of very few short chapters. We know there is a pro human terrorist organization trying to recruit desperate slaves called the Resistance, but all of these interesting subplots are shadowed by the endless chapters focusing on Miona getting bullied rather relentlessly by the biggest group of uncouth brutes you could imagine.

Sadly for me, reading rich & powerful school bully chapters is a huge pet peeve. I neither find bullies to be typically interesting characters and even less when they break the most ridiculous rules without even getting a slap in the wrist. Do they suffer from even the most minimal personal growth in the book? I would say zilch, nada.

The book explains quite quickly they harass Miona so much because they believe she doesn't belong in their class, and I think the best scene in the whole book is when Miona is forced to accompany the daughter of her owner to a birthday party while wearing an expensive dress and the bullies see the enslaved Miona dressed better than anyone else talking to a free human wearing a waitress uniform. I can understand to this point their reaction reflects a degree of ignorance teetering on the obscene. Still, I think Franken should have put them in their place after they snickered about the leg injury he sustained in the war. Simply because the book hints Torvan nobility are expected to behave to a certain standard towards adults, Franken has more political clout than their own parents... and because he just happens to be the secretary of defense. Like, you wouldn't presume the nation's biggest military head honcho wouldn't be capable of spying on you to send you to boot camp? Especially after getting fed up hearing how these bullies treat his prized possession?

The bullies are like... the worst spies ever. None of the teachers like them, everyone knows they are always getting into trouble and the upper level students don't respect them. Not even their older siblings think much about them. And the fact they appear in like... every... dratted... chapter, it's like the most obnoxious scenes of Draco Malfoy and his thugs of a Harry Potter novel with the exception these cat bullies lack Draco's charisma.

That isn't to say Miona is innocent. Actually I find her to be quite grating at times. Maybe it's because she was too sheltered in her prior slave school and never got the reality check and street smarts she needs to game the system. For example, the teachers know the class bullies want to gang up on her and are stupid enough to do it in a hallway in front of the cameras and dozens of witnesses. A smart person with few other resources due to their social position would realize it would be far too easy to let them scratch their body to pieces a la Fight Club style while expecting Miona’s much more redeemable classmates to act as reliable witnesses. Claw scratches in a public setting are a first tier battery offense in Torvan society and would be grounds for expulsion. Sure, Miona would have ended up badly injured, maybe even scarred. But her owner would not take too lightly about this sense of injustice and the bullies would become his new boot camp pet project. Instead of this, Miona spends a huge portion of the book running in hallways which only gets her the wrong kind of attention by school staff, gets punished and even enters remote forbidden school areas where if these bullies had the inclination, they would be capable of gang raping her. A lot of slaves in the book have the common sense to game the system in their favor and Miona has never been able to realize how much political clout she does have.

But I am certain these personal issues are things that won't annoy other readers, and if you ignore these points, the book is fun, I didn't spot almost any typos, the world building is so rich that we discover Torvan cuisine and combat sports, and it's kind of a shame this novella ends where it does in a bit of an odd spot. It feels like the end of a chapter entering the third act of a book.

I would be interested in reading the official book 1 of the series because taking away from the pet peeves that annoyed me, the book is quite engaging. Quite a shame it has been almost 10 years and book 2 was never released for some reason. So far there is no definite date when the next book will be published so chances are this series might end up incomplete.… (más)

I was surprised. The opening chapters presented a world that was much more interesting than I had expected, and I sympathized immediately with the main character.

Unfortunately, the story didn't turn out to be as interesting as I'd hoped, and my sympathy for the main character was worn a little thin. She's a well-written kid, I think. She was pretty arrogant and not good at staying out of trouble. And she got a little annoying (e.g. she lied all the time but was upset when nobody believed her).

In a world dominated by strange beasts (I could never get straight what exactly they were or which species looked like what), Humans are usually slaves. Sometimes it's worse than that, as groups try to fight against certain regulations so they can trade in human meat. However, the story is mostly light-hearted and the main story is how Miona deals with the school bullies and finally makes friends.

I was a little surprised by the ending. Not the plot, just the way it ended. It wasn't very satisfying, and there were several questions that never got answered. Perhaps there is a sequel.

Definitely a fun book for children and the YA audience.… (más)