The Alchemist and the Executioness
Jul. 13th, 2010 09:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shipperxSo today I finished listening to The Alchemist and the Executioness. Loved it. Yeah, it's light summer audio book 'reading,' but I really liked this one.
However, my guess that the two stories would intersect was wrong. The two storylines never intersect. They just share the same fictional world.
The Alchemist's story felt almost like a fairytale to me. A fairytale mixed with some Edgar Allen Poe as something about it reminds me of The Cask of Amontillado In the alchemist's quest to save his daughter, he discovers a way to drive back the magical bramble that is consuming their world. He goes to the Mayor to show his world-saving invention. The Mayor and the Magistrate (the only man allowed to use magic) are impressed, ask if they can keep the contraption so that they can inspect it, and will the Alchemist come back tomorrow. The Alchemist has a sense of unease about this but shakes it off as paranoia. He should have listened to the instincts. There's nothing earth shattering in the story, but I found it consistently interesting.
The Executioness' story was quite different from the Alchemist's in both content and tone, though it also hinges on the curse of bramble destroying their world. In the kingdom/empire where both the Executioness and the Alchemist live, the use of magic has become punishable by death because magic causes the bramble to grow. The impenetrable and toxic bramble is consuming their world. In another kingdom (that seemed kind of Bronze Ageish to me) this has created a religious cult that believes in "The Way." These men have become Crusaders, attacking kingdoms that still have the ability to use magic in the hopes of eradicating both magic and the people that use it. These raiders kill all of the adult men as well as women and girls of childbearing age while stealing children they deem young enough (and malleable enough) to become indoctrinated into "The Way." The heroine is forced by circumstance and obligation into taking her father's place as one of the Mayor's executioners, but on the day that she is in the city to perform a dreaded execution, the Raiders/Crusaders attack her village, killing her husband and father and stealing both her sons. Still dressed as the Executioner, she follows the raiders only to find herself in confrontation with four of them. They are amused by a woman having attacked them and, because she is beyond child-bearing age, they only hobble her rather than kill her. She almost dies in the wastelands but is found by a trading Caravan traveling the Spice Road. They aid and heal her and, as they travel, she discovers that she's developed a reputation as "The Executioness", a female executioner who had bested an entire raiding party on her own (which isn't true. It was only four men and they bested her, but she finds that she is becoming a legend, and legends rarely traffic in whole truths).
Through the course of the story and in her quest to reach the Raider's city to find her stolen sons, she gains skills in battle. She later runs across a Robin Hood-like character who has been plotting rebellion against the Raiders, only he can never find enough able-bodied men to raise an army. The Executioness tells him that, because he is a man, he cannot see what is around him, that there is an army to be had. Just as she has become a warrior, there are other women like her, women whose homes have been destroyed, whose loved ones have been murdered, and whose children have been stolen. These women would fight. The Executioness then leads this war and its army of both women and men into the climactic battle.
All in all, I completely enjoyed it.
However, my guess that the two stories would intersect was wrong. The two storylines never intersect. They just share the same fictional world.
The Alchemist's story felt almost like a fairytale to me. A fairytale mixed with some Edgar Allen Poe as something about it reminds me of The Cask of Amontillado In the alchemist's quest to save his daughter, he discovers a way to drive back the magical bramble that is consuming their world. He goes to the Mayor to show his world-saving invention. The Mayor and the Magistrate (the only man allowed to use magic) are impressed, ask if they can keep the contraption so that they can inspect it, and will the Alchemist come back tomorrow. The Alchemist has a sense of unease about this but shakes it off as paranoia. He should have listened to the instincts. There's nothing earth shattering in the story, but I found it consistently interesting.
The Executioness' story was quite different from the Alchemist's in both content and tone, though it also hinges on the curse of bramble destroying their world. In the kingdom/empire where both the Executioness and the Alchemist live, the use of magic has become punishable by death because magic causes the bramble to grow. The impenetrable and toxic bramble is consuming their world. In another kingdom (that seemed kind of Bronze Ageish to me) this has created a religious cult that believes in "The Way." These men have become Crusaders, attacking kingdoms that still have the ability to use magic in the hopes of eradicating both magic and the people that use it. These raiders kill all of the adult men as well as women and girls of childbearing age while stealing children they deem young enough (and malleable enough) to become indoctrinated into "The Way." The heroine is forced by circumstance and obligation into taking her father's place as one of the Mayor's executioners, but on the day that she is in the city to perform a dreaded execution, the Raiders/Crusaders attack her village, killing her husband and father and stealing both her sons. Still dressed as the Executioner, she follows the raiders only to find herself in confrontation with four of them. They are amused by a woman having attacked them and, because she is beyond child-bearing age, they only hobble her rather than kill her. She almost dies in the wastelands but is found by a trading Caravan traveling the Spice Road. They aid and heal her and, as they travel, she discovers that she's developed a reputation as "The Executioness", a female executioner who had bested an entire raiding party on her own (which isn't true. It was only four men and they bested her, but she finds that she is becoming a legend, and legends rarely traffic in whole truths).
Through the course of the story and in her quest to reach the Raider's city to find her stolen sons, she gains skills in battle. She later runs across a Robin Hood-like character who has been plotting rebellion against the Raiders, only he can never find enough able-bodied men to raise an army. The Executioness tells him that, because he is a man, he cannot see what is around him, that there is an army to be had. Just as she has become a warrior, there are other women like her, women whose homes have been destroyed, whose loved ones have been murdered, and whose children have been stolen. These women would fight. The Executioness then leads this war and its army of both women and men into the climactic battle.
All in all, I completely enjoyed it.
