The Mount

This stream-of-consciousness story of a boy enslaved by an alien race and bred to be a form of transportation for the nearly helpless aliens has a lot going for it. It's insight into dominance, acceptance, self-determination, helpless interdependence and stagnation is quite engaging.

The world building is more problematic. It's not clear until one small passage how the alens were able to completely enslave humanity, and it is not explained at all how all the humans that escape or remained free forgot all of the technological knowledgee they would have had to fight the aliens with.

This novel can easily be read as an apologia for slavery, as the aliens are supposedly benevolent slavers, but the abuse, control and violence undermines the premise almost fatally. One group off human slaves are happy to have privileges even as slaves, while other free humans cannot abide the aliens in any way, and rise up to overthrow them.

Just one example can suffice: the protagonist is a slave, but his father is an escaped slave, one that had been physically tortureed and abused while enslaved, to the point his mouth cannot make normal words without effort. The protagonist shows no signifficant concern for his father's disability, no connection between it and the abuse by the alien slavers, and no one makes any effort to explain why his father has been deformed, or fled to freedom, or even why his father wants to free his son. The boy remains naive and confusted until the last chapter, wheere all is made right and the story abruptly ends.

Indeed, the means to the end is even more toubling, but best not to spoil it for those still interested in the resolution.