Maia (novel)

(This article is about the fantasy novel. "Maia" is also the title of a fictitious novel by the main character of Thomas Mann's "Death in Venice".)

Related Topics:
Thomas Mann - Death in Venice

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Maia is a fantasy novel by Richard Adams, published in 1984. Although not marketed as a romance novel, it also fits into that genre.

Related Topics:
Fantasy - Richard Adams - 1984 - Romance novel

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Maia is a beautiful teenage peasant girl who is sold into slavery. She meets many colorful, boldly drawn characters and has many adventures in dance, high and low life, rivers in flood, espionage, politics, and war.

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Some scenes, including some depicting Maia's period as a slave in a wealthy and noble houshold, include moderately explicit sexual and sado-masochistic elements. These, like the torture scenes in Shardik, will be disturbing to some readers.

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Several of the characters in the book grapple with the morality of slavery, and a civil war is fought in part to restrict the actions of slavers and limit the number of slaves in the Beklan Empire.

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Maia is set in the same fantasy world as Adams's novel Shardik, which was published in 1974, about ten years before Maia. The events of Maia take place about twenty years earlier than those in Shardik. Several characters appear in both books.

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Maia ends with the sort of quotidian, pastoral, familial scene (in Maia's memory and expectation of returning home) which seems to be the reward of positive characters in many of Adams's works.

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