King's Property by Morgan Howell
December 20th 2007 05:55
KING'S PROPERTY
Morgan Howell
First book in the Queen of the Orcs series
I just finished reading the first part of the Queen of the Orcs trilogy : King's Property.
These are not the Orcs of Tolkien's LOTR but appear to be hominids who are stronger and stronger than the local humans and bound by a treaty to serve a cruel human king. They kill partly cos their hardwiring is different to humans for example they can not lie and have difficulty understanding the concept of a delibarate untruth and they're matriarchal and obey their general cos he's seen as the representative of their Queen.
The central character Dar comes from the sort of mountain village where incest is a recreational sport and has been betrayed by her family and given over to slavery as serving wench in a military camp where she's open to abuse from both the human soldiers and the female camp followers. Disgusted with the behaviour of her fellow humans she decides to learn more about the orcs who appear to be dangerous near animals but are not. They once built a magnificent multispan bridge over a river the army crosses in its travels and clearly have high order metal working skills.
She takes the time to learn the orcs' language and ask why they behave in certain ways and what triggers their violent behaviour towards humans and this leads to her befriending one of them which leads to ... well lets just say I will be looking for the second book in the series ... Clan Daughter
Highly recommended fantasy *****
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