Audio Book Rec
Jul. 12th, 2010 10:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shipperxWhen your job involves drawing for most of the day, you have a lot of time to listen... which is why I tend to listen to as many books as I read. Anyway, I think I may have an audio book rec -- The Alchemist and the Executioness.
The authors say that they had listened to a panel discussion complaining about women's roles in genre fiction and about the way that women were often reduced to nubile, sexy young things without families. The panel had wondered where the other heroines were? How about middle aged ones? So the writers decided to take the challenge and see what they could create.
I'm only half-way through the audio book (which seems to be an audible.com exclusive), but so far, I've been quite intrigued.
Actually, it's two stories that run parallel to one another. I they will combine somewhere down the line as they both take place in the same fantasy kingdom/dying empire at the same time.
One story is set in Upper Cheam and the other story in Lesser Cheam, both of which exist in a a world where magic exists but has become illegal. In fact, performing magic has become a capital offense punished by beheading. The reason behind law is that whenever magic is used, it spurs the growth of "the bramble." In a very 'Sleeping Beauty' -esque way, the bramble grows and grows, having already consumed large chunks of the world. Anyone caught by the thorns falls into sleeping sickness and 'dies.' The "alchemist" of the title tells a parable of an evil sorcerer who liked to magic his enemies into a room without doors or windows, then shrinking the room ever smaller until it slowly squeezes the life out of his enemies. The alchemist likens this tale to the bramble that has been walling off larger and larger chunks of their world. Upper Cheam is last vestige of an old dying empire, it's great cities having already been consumed by the bramble. Lower Cheam is a refugee camp filled with people whose homes and lands have already been consumed. (And in a bit of 'isn't it typical?' contradiction, the state, or rather the Magistrate, continues to use magic to maintain what is left of the old, dying empire as it seems other technology is rather rudimentary. It is only illegal for the citizens to use magic).
The herione lives in Lesser Cheam where she tends to her dying father, her husband, and her two sons (who I think are in their teens). Her father wasn't a good father and she didn't marry well. Her husband isn't awful or anything, but he's never made a go of things. The family farm never produced and that was before it was mostly consumed by the bramble. The family subsists off her father's salary as one of Cheam's executioners, tasked with killing those convicted of practicing magic. On his deathbed, her father is summoned to perform his duties as executioner. Physically unable to go, he forces his daughter to take his place, dressing her in his hood and robes and sending her to Upper Cheam where she will have to execute a convicted prisoner. This happens to be the day when Lesser Cheam is attacked by raiders and who steal her two sons and force them into slavery, after which she vows to find and rescue them.
In the second story, an Upper Cheam Alchemist's daughter has been caught in bramble and has the sleeping sickness. Half by accident, half because it has long been his own quest, the girls father manages an alchemical explosion that destroyed the bramble ensnaring his daughter, saving her life...mostly. Even though he saved her, the child has never fully recovered and has the wasting sickness. In the years since, he has been using 'small magic' to prevent her from growing worse as he tries to reproduce the explosion that killed the bramble in the hopes that if he can find a way to do this that the elite of Cheam can beat back the bramble, restore the old ways, remove the laws against magic allowing for the return of 'big magic' that might cure his daughter.
Anyway, thus far it's been really intriguing. One of the better books -- audio or written -- that I've run across in a while.
The authors say that they had listened to a panel discussion complaining about women's roles in genre fiction and about the way that women were often reduced to nubile, sexy young things without families. The panel had wondered where the other heroines were? How about middle aged ones? So the writers decided to take the challenge and see what they could create.
I'm only half-way through the audio book (which seems to be an audible.com exclusive), but so far, I've been quite intrigued.
Actually, it's two stories that run parallel to one another. I they will combine somewhere down the line as they both take place in the same fantasy kingdom/dying empire at the same time.
One story is set in Upper Cheam and the other story in Lesser Cheam, both of which exist in a a world where magic exists but has become illegal. In fact, performing magic has become a capital offense punished by beheading. The reason behind law is that whenever magic is used, it spurs the growth of "the bramble." In a very 'Sleeping Beauty' -esque way, the bramble grows and grows, having already consumed large chunks of the world. Anyone caught by the thorns falls into sleeping sickness and 'dies.' The "alchemist" of the title tells a parable of an evil sorcerer who liked to magic his enemies into a room without doors or windows, then shrinking the room ever smaller until it slowly squeezes the life out of his enemies. The alchemist likens this tale to the bramble that has been walling off larger and larger chunks of their world. Upper Cheam is last vestige of an old dying empire, it's great cities having already been consumed by the bramble. Lower Cheam is a refugee camp filled with people whose homes and lands have already been consumed. (And in a bit of 'isn't it typical?' contradiction, the state, or rather the Magistrate, continues to use magic to maintain what is left of the old, dying empire as it seems other technology is rather rudimentary. It is only illegal for the citizens to use magic).
The herione lives in Lesser Cheam where she tends to her dying father, her husband, and her two sons (who I think are in their teens). Her father wasn't a good father and she didn't marry well. Her husband isn't awful or anything, but he's never made a go of things. The family farm never produced and that was before it was mostly consumed by the bramble. The family subsists off her father's salary as one of Cheam's executioners, tasked with killing those convicted of practicing magic. On his deathbed, her father is summoned to perform his duties as executioner. Physically unable to go, he forces his daughter to take his place, dressing her in his hood and robes and sending her to Upper Cheam where she will have to execute a convicted prisoner. This happens to be the day when Lesser Cheam is attacked by raiders and who steal her two sons and force them into slavery, after which she vows to find and rescue them.
In the second story, an Upper Cheam Alchemist's daughter has been caught in bramble and has the sleeping sickness. Half by accident, half because it has long been his own quest, the girls father manages an alchemical explosion that destroyed the bramble ensnaring his daughter, saving her life...mostly. Even though he saved her, the child has never fully recovered and has the wasting sickness. In the years since, he has been using 'small magic' to prevent her from growing worse as he tries to reproduce the explosion that killed the bramble in the hopes that if he can find a way to do this that the elite of Cheam can beat back the bramble, restore the old ways, remove the laws against magic allowing for the return of 'big magic' that might cure his daughter.
Anyway, thus far it's been really intriguing. One of the better books -- audio or written -- that I've run across in a while.
