Haesel the Slave
by Dael Forest
1975 New English Library / 1978 Ballantine
Pretty sweet Boris Vallejo cover, right? Well, that's as sexy as it gets. Glorious Trash theorizes that this series is one epic split up into parts. I'd agree, given that there's no real finite story here, but I suspect nothing happens through the entire series. A freed slave becomes an actor, people but plots of land, discuss the price of papyrus, a man loses his leg in a chariot race, etc. The highlight is a circus in the middle, with gladiator battles and donkey rape.
There is some sleaze, but it's so deeply between the lines you'd have to imagine a parallel book to get anything out of it. If you've Spartacus: Blood and Sand, you'll remember the banalities discussed by the nobles while being sexually serviced by slaves. Now picture the G rated cut of that, where the sex and violence is casually mentioned as existing but not described.
"The sex show is about to start, anyway I'm looking to buy real estate. Oh, the show is over, by the way they were all siblings. Say, the price of papyrus is through the roof."
As with everything else I read these days, Kenneth Bulmer is sometimes listed as the author, but the blame goes to Stephen D. Frances, the author behind the Hank Jansen novels and the amazing Scream and Scream Again.
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