Master Alvin
The Tales of Alvin Maker, Book Seven
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Master Alvin
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By:
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Orson Scott Card
The Tales of Alvin Maker concludes in Master Alvin, the final book in the historical fantasy series from the Hugo and Nebula award-winning and New York Times bestselling author of Ender's Game.
This program features multicast narration.
Inspired by the lore and the folk-magic of the men and women who settled North America, Orson Scott Card has created an alternate world where magic works, and where that magic has colored the entire history of the colonies. Charms and beseechings, hexes and potions, all have a place in the lives of the people of this world. Dowsers find water, the second sight warns of dangers to come, and a torch can read a person's future—or their heart.
In a world where "knacks" abound, Alvin, the seventh son of a seventh son, is a very special man indeed. He's a Maker; he has the knack of understanding how things are put together, how to create them, repair them, keep them whole, or tear them down. He can heal hearts as well as bones, he builds a house, he can calm the waters or blow up a storm. And he can teach his knack to others, to the measure of their own talent.
In this final novel in the Alvin Maker series, Alvin’s journey leads him across the river—visiting his old friend the Red Prophet, across the country, and even across the Atlantic, where Irish folk with knacks are being persecuted. Through trials and tribulations, Alvin must learn when to use his extraordinary powers, and when to not, as he strives to safehold his people from a darkness that threatens everything they’ve built in the Crystal City, and in their very hearts.
The Tales of Alvin Maker series
Seventh Son
Red Prophet
Prentice Alvin
Alvin Journeyman
Heartfire
The Crystal City
Master Alvin
A Macmillan Audio production from Tor Books
Continue the series
Critic reviews
Praise for Orson Scott Card
“One of the greats of contemporary science fiction and fantasy.”
—The Wall Street Journal
“Orson Scott Card is as fine a writer as we have.”
—The Los Angeles Times
“Card is a master storyteller.”
—The Seattle Times
But first I’d like to mention that Orson Scott Card is one of my favourite authors in science fiction and fantasy. It began with the serialised Ender’s Game in Analog in the 1970s, and Ender’s Game in book form was no disappointment. This was followed by the Ender’s Shadow series, which tells the story of Andrew Wiggins’s companion Bean in Ender’s Shadow – a book I was so fascinated by that I could hardly put it down.
The Alvin Maker series is also one of my favourite series, and I’ve read it several times. I’ve therefore naturally been eagerly awaiting whether Card would even publish the final volume and how extensive it would be. And here it is at last.
The first thing that strikes me is that I find the books Card writes with children as the main characters far more captivating than his other more adult books. We have Andrew Wiggin in Ender’s Game, we have Bean in Ender’s Shadow, we have Rigg in Pathfinder, and we have Alvin in The Seventh Son and The Red Prophet – children you can empathise with. In this final volume Alvin Maker, Alvin is probably in his 30s, and here he never becomes a character I find truly interesting. For one thing, he doesn’t come across as a very good family man. Instead, he travels around on missions, whilst his wife Margaret and his son largely have to fend for themselves. All experience suggests this isn’t a good thing, and one of the characters in the book (Taleswapper?) also points this out to Alvin at one point.
Another thing that lets the book down for me is that it doesn’t have a clear main character you can follow and empathise with. Instead, the plot jumps between different people: Arthur Stuart, Alvin’s wife Margaret, Alvin’s obnoxious brother Calvin, and Calvin’s mistress Eliza to mention a few. This makes it harder to really get into the book.
At times, the book also makes quite a few jumps. For example, at one point Alvin plans to go to Ireland and bring back a large group of "knackels", i.e. people with "knacks" or special abilities. Then, a few chapters later, he has suddenly already been in Ireland for some time, where apparently everyone and everything knows who he is, without any natural transition.
And finally, Card has clearly been more concerned with the dialogue in the book than the plot itself. Page after page, he describes the conversations or discussions between different characters, and to a large degree I find it to be mostly chatter. If Card had tightened up the dialogue and devoted more attention to the plot itself, he could probably have ended up with a book of around 300 pages, rather than the current 450.
I therefore feel the book has a number of shortcomings, unfortunately, and the main reason I still wish to recommend it is that it finally concludes the series. But the book unfortunately cannot stand on its own, unlike many of the other volumes in the series.
Not among the best in the series
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