Ashamet, Desert Born

Ashamet, Desert Born by Terry Jackman
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Terry Jackman's Ashamet, Desert Born has an exciting plot that gets buried under superfluous descriptions of clothing and rooms while barely detailing characters (besides very brief, and quite confusing, mentions in the first few pages) or the world they live in.

The reader gets a sense in the first chapter that there are a variety of races of men in the desert land but the characterization stops there. The different races are named and referred to throughout the book but never described for me to get a true sense of the differences (which seemed to be important). The first person narration of the novel, however, gave insight into Prince Ashamet's character, which was self-centered and apathetic. He also rambled on about the walls of rooms and what clothing everyone was wearing to a point of complete disinterest on my part. I started skimming paragraphs after about 1/3 into the book.

There is a huge absence of female influence throughout, which accounts for the the lack of variety and depth. It is a male-dominated world where females are only used for breeding. It was billed as having same-sex elements when actuality, it is essentially a same-sex romance novel.

The ending was satisfying and nice point to start a sequel. If Jackman can tone down the excessive descriptions and play up the more exciting plot, the sequel will be quite good!

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