Savages
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5.0 • 5 Ratings
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
An unnamed man wakes to find himself facing the loss of everything that matters most to him. Against all odds, he escapes with his life and heads out into the turbulence of the wider world, recreating himself, step by step, as he goes along.
That wider world is dominated by an empire that has existed for decades in a state of near perpetual war. A host of colorful characters will help to shape the destiny of the empire, and its constantly shifting array of allies and adversaries; among them, a master military strategist, a former pacifist who inherits his father’s moribund arms business, a beautiful forger and a very lucky counterfeiter. Each of them, together with corrupt bureaucrats and the nomadic 'savages' of the title, plays a part in a gradually unfolding drama of conflict and conquest played for the highest of stakes.
A story of war, politics, intrigue, deception, and survival, Savages is a hugely ambitious, convincingly detailed novel that is impossible to set aside. Filled with schemes, counter-schemes, sudden reversals of fortune, and brilliantly described accounts of complex military encounters, it is, by any measure, an extraordinary entertainment, the work of a writer whose ambition, range, and sheer narrative power have never been more thoroughly on display.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Parker delivers another solid standalone adventure filled with political and social intrigue. The titular savages (the Aram Chantat from 2012's Sharps) only gradually come to the forefront of the plot through their alliance with a corrupt, failing republic under the auspices of Calojan, a great general. Calojan whose father was once the republic's greatest pornographer, a running gag that Parker handles with admirable subtlety needs arrows to make the Aram Chantat happy, and he strikes a deal with Aimeric, a pacifist, to make them. Aimeric, a student wrangling with family debts, finds himself compromising his values again and again even as he rises to power. Both men's stories intersect with those of a man on the run, a forger, and a counterfeiter. Parker occasionally relies a little too strongly on coincidence or an unbelievable setup, and the pages-long exposition dump in which the Aram Chantat political system is explained is painfully clumsy. Female characters get only a tiny fraction of the author's attention. But there's much to enjoy in the well-crafted action, battle sequences, and assorted political and social twists within a society in upheaval.
