By A.S. Hardin
Tales of the Left Hand does just what it says it will in delivering “swashbuckling, intrigue and a dash of magic,” and it’s all free on the Librvox app for Apple and Andrioid. To be honest, because the book was free, I didn’t expect much. I found it while downloading random books to listen to and thankfully, I was pleasantly surprised.
The book opens with a quick and interesting introduction to the world of The Frees. Meagher builds and delivers his intricate world artistically by avoiding the overwhelming and tedious spill of details. The story quickly ramps up when Tesca and Kayrla, two strangers are forced to fight together if they plan to get out of the pinch they wound up in.
I greatly enjoyed the author’s unconventional take on elves, from the color of their skin and hair to the attributes of their blood and magic abilities. I found his use of the Duke’s Left and Right Hand a phenomenal idea all on its own.
To my knowledge, Meagher has written only three books and they are the three books in this series. He stated he had written them simply to fine-tune his true passion, voice acting and it certainly shows. Meagher is delightful in narrating his own work. If you give it a try, I believe you would find it just as enjoyable as I did.
In the tropical island region known as the Frees, magic is growing stronger, and gunpowder is becoming less reliable. Amid this world of “swashbuckling, intrigue, and a dash of magic,” two adventurers literally run into each other and are forced to fight together against pirates, sinister assassins and powerful merchant families, in the process developing a most unlikely friendship.
Tesca is the Left Hand, a spy and assassin serving the Duke of Kohaya, ruler of one of the independent realms within the Frees. Kayrla is a sailor and sometime pirate with a few magical tricks up her sleeve. While fleeing the wrath of her former captain, Kayrla collides with Tesca, who’s on a mission of his own, and her captain, assuming them to be partners, sics his crew on both of them. Cutting their way free of the pirates, the pair come to realize that they make a very effective team, but will their combined talents be enough to stop an assassin seeking the Duke’s life, and who appears to be more than a match for either Tesca’s blades or Kayrla’s magic?
