Book Review: The Golden Slave

The odyssey of a barbarian prince captured by the Romans.

An old (1960) and forgotten book by Poul Anderson, one of the real masters of genre literature. I recovered it luckily from a charity shop because it can be quite complicated to obtain a copy.

A very early example of historical fiction honestly this is not Anderson best book. Of course this certainly doesn’t means that it is a bad one because Anderson sub par writing is still worth it.

The beginning and the end are very strong but the middle bit is too slow. Part of the problem lies in the realistic characterization that Anderson gave to his protagonist. Not only he is a barbarian prince, he actually thinks and feels like a real barbarian. This make for a very satisfying reading when he eventually evolves but for most of the book he is insufferable. Maybe if he gave us other viewpoint characters it would have been better, the notional bad guy look much more interesting.

While all the romantic plots are really evident, at least for us, the final twist is really interesting and caught me totally unprepared.

Too historical for fantasy but too limited for an historical novel this minor Anderson is still a good reading.