MY REVIEW
The cover for The Sapien Empire by Nathan Ogloff made me curious and I thought about Mad Max, with all the machines on the cover. The sand tells me the end of the world is here.
Shindo Dacan will be called upon to step into a leadership role he never wanted, but is well prepared to take on. He doesn’t realize how perfect he is to take on the challenge. He would rather be tinkering in his workshop, creating machines that can improve people’s lives.
Vibrun, the Arch Lordchief, is a cruel tyrant. He sacrifices, not only animals, but people. He revels in it. Laughs at the pain and misery of others. Some of the torture heaped on the people was graphic butchery.
I found Tersona fascinating, but she is every bit as cruel as everyone else. Jarim teaches Shindo much of the history of the world before the apocalypse and I feel is going to have a prominent place in The Sapien Empire.
We always have those who covet what others have, without working for it. The Rustraisers treated combat like a sport. You can’t change the basic nature of people and their feeling of entitlement. Trust is hard fought.
I love apocalyptic/dystopian stories, where people have to figure out how to survive. They have to learn to work together. Thought provoking…trying to put myself into their place and wondering how I would react. Nathan Ogloff has done a wonderful job with, what I think, is his debut novel. The story flows smoothly, the characters coming to life on the pages, growing and developing as the story moves along. The pace picks up as the battles begin and Shindo rises to the occasion. I hated to reach the end, but the story is far from over and the characters are still talking to Nathan. The Sapien Empire: the Realms of Restarted Civilization is coming in the fall of 2024. Count me in.
GOODREADS BLUB
Shindo Dacan is a socially awkward but gifted engineer who has made the most brilliant machines seen since before the All-Silence—machines that ruler Vibrun Magrite used in his creation of the Domain as he brought all four of the city-states within his iron grip. With the help of a friend of his, Shindo is secretly planning to provide prosthetic limbs to the many victims of the war his machines have waged.
When Magrite finds out and slaughters Shindo’s friend before his eyes, Shindo tricks Magrite into funding a warrior mech to wreak revenge and is unwillingly rewarded with a woman from Magrite’s harem, Jarim Alsaedon. With his mech machine and Jarim’s help, Shindo stages a coup d’état that leaves Magrite dead and him and his accomplice as platonic dual heads of state.
As Shindo and Jarim work to rebuild their civilization, they’re beset by factions both within and beyond the Domain’s borders. Can Shindo learn how to design a stable peace before the new world he’d envisioned becomes a wasteland of death and destruction?
- Genre: Apolyptic, Dystopian, Fiction, Steampunk
- 366 pages, Kindle Edition
- Published November 7, 2023 by Nathan Ogloff
ABOUT NATHAN OGLOFF (from Book Sirens
Nathan was born in New Westminster, British Columbia, and has lived in different parts of Canada and the US. He obtained a degree in computer science with a minor in film studies from UBC in 2008, with an emphasis on pursuing video game development.When that didn’t work out, he worked in construction while writing his debut novel. Nathan has had a fascination with story ever since he wrote a couple of pages to a time-travel book when he was in third-grade. The varied jobs he’s had and places he’s lived have given him a wide array of perspectives to draw upon for his story-telling.When he’s not writing, Nathan spends his time adding to his ever increasing heavy-metal Spotify playlist and creating spaceships in Lego Studio.
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