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Harper-Jones starts this retelling of Royce E. Gibbons’ Victorian Era translation of Epos of Atlantis with an explanation. She forewarns any fans of the classical tale that this will be different to his muted transcript; she will not leave out the bawdy details, the sex and morally grey subjections of her hero. But even with this warning, I still wasn’t quite prepared for what followed. Although Harper-Jones claims that Slave of Atlantis is a relatively true retelling of Gibbons’ original translation (although with more modern interpretations and language), it’s impossible to say if this is the case. I struggled to find any references to Royce Gibbons online, despite conducting several searches using different word combinations. So, I’ll just have to take Harper-Jones’ announcement at face value.
So, with Slave of Atlantis, we’re thrown immediately into a world of brutality. Tar is a young teen living with his tribe at the mouth of a river, when they’re attacked by pirates. The tribe are warriors at nature, but Tar is still taken by surprise and captured into slavery, and will shape his life for the rest of the story. He’s abused, forced into fighting pits, has a lot of sex, is forced into manual labour in a chain gang and must survive a night in a mad-mans deadly garden.
There’s some very, very graphic scenes in Slave of Atlantis as we follow Tar on his hell-bent revenge quest and determination to stay alive. It’s a grim tale, of the sheer brutality of the human race, and how we can be our own most dangerous enemies. But there are also some points of humour, especially in the second part of the book when Tar meets a wonderfully foul-mouthed pirate woman with whom he must make a fragile alliance if he hopes to survive to the next morning.
While the first part of the book is more or less Tar’s biography (in essence), the second part of the book strongly reminded me of a sped up Hunger Games. He must survive a night in a deadly garden upon Atlantis’ man made surface, dodging attacks from other captured slaves. Only one person may win this contest in an arena filled with deadly creatures and even deadlier traps. That’s where he meets Krait, the aforementioned foul-mouthed pirate woman. Krait brings a much needed spate of quick one-liners and quick wittedness that had been missing from the first part.
In all? If you enjoy reading books with graphic sexual content, explicit language and gory fighting, all set on the much fantasised continent of Atlantis, then this is the book for you. For what it’s worth, I enjoyed it.
S. A.
First published on Reedsy Discovery as part of their ARC program. You can read the original review here.
You buy Slave of Atlantis by clicking on the above review (at time of review there are no links to purchase).