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A review by emilythesmelly
Tales of the Left Hand, Book 1 by John Meagher
2.0
This was... disappointing. It's hard to be all that mad at a free audiobook, but here we are. It was very clear to me that this was [a:John Meagher|104346|John Meagher|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png]'s first book as I was listening. There's a very "rookie" quality to the prose that's sometimes very hard to ignore. Most of my issues with this come in spots where the narration focuses in on thoughts, feelings, and dialogue. I felt like there was more telling than showing, that all of the characters were more inclined to speak honestly aloud with each other than real people are for the sake of moving the plot along, and that character motivations were often arbitrary. I also felt that this did not feel like the first book in a series, but the first act in one book (granted, in need of editing to cut it down). Not enough happens for this to have been a real arcing story, though it could have been a solid introduction to a single story if it had been edited that way. It ended up being a lot of smaller, technical aspects of the story that I felt resulted from inexperience that ended up grating on me and taking away from a solid plot and potentially interesting characters.
That being said, it was also hard to ignore some pretty racist threads in the story. In a poorly done show/tell scenario, we are told that the Empire is nuanced and sophisticated, and I'll admit that the Argument and the Retort is a wonderful idea and detail, but they also fall into a dark skinned aggressor trope with their focus on war and that duel with Tesca is particularly...yucky. Tesca becomes a bit of an Iron Fist character with all the problematic baggage that comes with that. Plus, if your book says "those black bastards" over and over again (and this one does), there's probably something racist at its heart.
All this being said, there's a chance I'll still be going back for the second book in this series. There's precious little tropical fantasy out there, and even fewer with audiobooks (much less free audiobooks). I'll do it grudgingly, but I might still do it.
That being said, it was also hard to ignore some pretty racist threads in the story. In a poorly done show/tell scenario, we are told that the Empire is nuanced and sophisticated, and I'll admit that the Argument and the Retort is a wonderful idea and detail, but they also fall into a dark skinned aggressor trope with their focus on war and that duel with Tesca is particularly...yucky. Tesca becomes a bit of an Iron Fist character with all the problematic baggage that comes with that. Plus, if your book says "those black bastards" over and over again (and this one does), there's probably something racist at its heart.
All this being said, there's a chance I'll still be going back for the second book in this series. There's precious little tropical fantasy out there, and even fewer with audiobooks (much less free audiobooks). I'll do it grudgingly, but I might still do it.