American Library Association “Best Books for Young Adults”…
From the author of Ender’s Game, an unforgettable story about young Alvin Maker: the seventh son of a seventh son. Born into an alternative frontier America where life is hard and folk magic is real, Alvin is gifted with the power. He must learn to use his gift wisely. But dark forces are arrayed against Alvin, and only a young girl with second sight can protect him.
Seventh Son
by Orson Scott Card
Series
Alvin Maker #1
Genre
Young Adult
Fantasy
Publisher
Tor Books
Publication Date
January 1, 2006
Wow. Great story. I borrowed this audiobook for a sick day, so I could rest and take in a story with my eyes closed. The narrators were great. I believe there were four, one for each of the main perspectives the story took. The colloquial twang of the language at first made me wonder what I was in for, but as soon as the first tinge of magic appeared, I was all in.
Little Peggy, a torch, senses trouble by the river, and her family runs to help, just in time to save a woman and her soon to be born son, a seventh son, from the raging river. Then she saves the boy again soon after, glimpsing his future and her role in it in the process of bringing him into the world.
A maker is born.
A maker to fight against the unmaker of all things. A seventh son of a seventh son, granted wondrous power as a birthright, and a curse. The water, his enemy, an agent of the unmaker, waits and watches, ever patient, ever malevolent, to obliterate him.
I loved the blend of history, magic, and conflict. The theme of good vs. evil is taken a step further, becoming a battle between creation and oblivion. And, apparently, this is just the beginning of a rather long series. I thought it was funny that the author’s afterword was a promise that there would be only one more volume to this story (already 6 books long) even if that volume was 3000 pages long.
Anyhow, I loved this story and would strongly recommend it to folks who love both fantasy and historical fiction.
About Orson Scott Card
Orson Scott Card is the author of the novels Ender’s Game, Ender’s Shadow, and Speaker for the Dead, which are widely read by adults and younger readers, and are increasingly used in schools.
Besides these and other science fiction novels, Card writes contemporary fantasy (Magic Street, Enchantment, Lost Boys), biblical novels (Stone Tables, Rachel and Leah), the American frontier fantasy series The Tales of Alvin Maker (beginning with Seventh Son), poetry (An Open Book), and many plays and scripts.
Card was born in Washington and grew up in California, Arizona, and Utah. He served a mission for the LDS Church in Brazil in the early 1970s. Besides his writing, he teaches occasional classes and workshops and directs plays. He recently began a longterm position as a professor of writing and literature at Southern Virginia University.
Card currently lives in Greensboro, North Carolina, with his wife, Kristine Allen Card, and their youngest child, Zina Margaret.
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