Transformation - Carol Berg

Transformation by Carol Berg
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I’ve been intending to read Transformation for a long time. A friend recommended it to me, telling me to ignore the terrible cover, but I still let it sit on my virtual shelf for far too long. Thanks to my TBR challenge, I finally got around to it. I really loved it, and wish I’d read it sooner! This is a book that deserves more attention, and I agree - ignore the cover! 

 It’s a Fantasy that takes place in a large, greedy empire that gobbles up its neighbors and uses wide scale slavery. The culture(s) and magic system are well developed, but are filled in gradually from one character's viewpoint so you don't get the whole picture at the beginning. This is not the type of Fantasy with a lot of action and battles. There’s no revolution to take down the empire. The action is much more localized, but still engrossing - and there are still threats that become dire and affect the entire empire. 

It’s just that the characters are really the driving force, and the world, conflicts, and intrigues are revealed through their interactions and through the ways they change. This method can only work if the characters are interesting enough, and it worked here because I liked the main character from page one, and was invested in what would happen to him immediately. He is an educated slave whose past is gradually revealed throughout the story, so I won’t reveal it here. He gets purchased by the Emperor’s son, a volatile, selfish, cruel man. As property that thinks too much, he is often punished brutally, but somehow manages to hold on to his sanity and his sense of right, even when he knows it will cost him dearly. 

Learning more and more about the background of the main character kept me hooked until I finally had a sense of an entire world and system and his place in it, and by then I was invested in the larger conflict and the outcome. I loved how the characters changed each other, and I believe there’s potential for larger scale change in future books. I loved it. Recommended for those who enjoy something other than pure action and outright war in their Fantasy.