Barbary Slavemaster

by Allan Aldiss

This novel is set in a time and place where harem women really were totally at the mercy of the rich men who owned them, and of the black eunuchs who supervised them. European women really were captured by the Corsairs and sold in the slave markets of the East. The Barbary States did have a reputation for treating Christian slaves unbelievably harshly, almost as animals, and there actually were slave breeding farms in the Ottoman Empire ... and although you won't find Marsa on the map, there are several places where it well could have been. The story takes place during the long drawn out war between Britain and revolutionary and then Napoleonic France, which started in 1793 and only ended with the Battle of Waterloo twenty-two years later.
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160 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 22, 2010

Reviews

[Kyra · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm a big Allan Aldiss fan, but this book was just plain boring. Page after page of harem slaves being put through their paces, details of how they were tied in a coffle, chained here and there, made to eat off the ground ... You get the idea.

Very little real erotica, unless you're so into bondage that you want to know every miniscule detail of someone's fastening to the girl next to her.

I thought this would, at least, be a good story about the Barbary pirates, their involvement with England and France, how the rulers of the Barbary states maintained their powerbase, etc. But it got so bogged down in the details of how the slaves were posed, chained, and exercised that the plot was [almost] lost in the uninteresting trivia.

[Oliver · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the greats of erotic fiction. Aldiss creates a very believable scenario, entirely plausible, set in the early 19th centurey. His villain is a likeable rogue - (reminiscent of George MacDonald Fraser's 'Flashman'). This villain is obliged to flee England and seek sanctuary in North Africa, then under Ottoman rule, where he finds he rather enjoys owning slave girls, often captured European women, captured in raids on Italy or Greece, or from plundered ships. What makes the books so enjoyable is that you can empathise both with the villain, or anti hero, and with the girls themselves. The characters are true-to-life.

[Jo * Smut-Dickted * · Rating 1 out of 5]

Just not for me. The language was a difficult read and was done as if in period. It read a bit more like a historical that was trying to accurately reflect the language of the time period of the book. That is fine but it is not my thing - I was looking for a fun smutty book. Even sans smut - I just don't enjoy reading books where it takes required effort to understand what is going on. I was also confused about who was who, what was exactly happening, etc. I only got to 65% and I just cannot continue. That is pretty rare for me. YMMV.

[Vivian · Rating 2 out of 5]

Unemotional in a male POV porn sorta way. If you ever had practical questions about the how-tos of non-Golden Triangle slave trade, whys, etc. it is intriguing from that angle. Not my cup of tea, but the writing is decent and it has a plot. I just don't care for books that read like everyone's had an emotional lobotomy.