Posted at FanLit. http://www.fantasyliterature.com/revi...Prentice Alvin is the third book in Orson Scott Card’s TALES OF ALVIN MAKER. After the excitement in the last book, Red Prophet, when Alvin and his family experienced the Battle of Tippecanoe, Alvin is finally off to Hatrack River, where he was born, to begin his apprenticeship to Makepeace Smith, the blacksmith. He’s also hoping that Peggy, the Torch who watches over him, can help him figure out what it means to be a Maker because he’s had a vision of the Crystal City he must build.Peggy, who can see Alvin coming and knows he’s destined for greatness, realizes she’s in love with him and worries because she has no skills or education that will help him learn to be a Maker, or that will even cause him to admire her for more than her good looks. (Thank you, Mr. Card, for always giving your leading women a desire to be admired for more than their beauty!) So Peggy runs away to get educated and to acquire some social graces. (But not enough social graces to inspire her to write to her worried parents or to reveal herself to them when she comes back to Hatrack River disguised as a teacher.)Just before Peggy leaves Hatrack River, she helps a black slave girl who has used some evil magic to escape from the master who was raping her. The magic kills the girl, so Peggy’s parents decide to raise the girl’s “mixed up boy” as their own. Now they must deal with all the problems that occur in a society where Blacks are considered inferior to Whites. Meanwhile, the slave owner, who has been convinced that God wants him to dilute the entire black race with his own white genes, is hunting for his escaped property.There are some emotional moments, a few scary events, some nice lessons, and even some dark humor in Prentice Alvin, but after two books about how Whites are mistreating others in early America (the previous book, Red Prophet, was about how the “Whites” treated the “Reds”), it’s hard to avoid the suspicion that the TALES OF ALVIN MAKER is becoming a platform for lessons on social justice. (One begins to wonder which minority group will be championed in the next book. “Gays”?…. uh, probably not.)The beginning of Prentice Alvin moves slowly, especially the parts where Peggy gets nervous about Alvin’s arrival. There’s a lot of angsty dialogue here that becomes tiresome (I felt the same way about some of the dialogue in Card’s ENDER WIGGIN novels). Alvin’s life in Hatrack River isn’t nearly as exciting as his adventures in Red Prophet. His apprenticeship lasts seven years. During that time we see him turn into a strong man, acquire a trade, discover more about his own sinfulness and pride and, when Peggy returns from school and begins to teach him, learn enough about quantum mechanics that he begins to understand his power as a maker. This part of the story is fairly interesting, though it kind of goes off the deep end when, at the climax of the story, Alvin creates a living golden plow for his Journeyman project. Huh?Overall, this third book in the series is well-written (as always) but doesn’t do much to advance Alvin’s story and felt more like a lesson to me. Nevertheless, it won the Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel in 1990 and was nominated for a Nebula and Hugo award, probably for its social justice themes. Personally, I feel like the saga is slowing down, just like I felt with the third book in the ENDER WIGGIN series. Readers who just enjoy spending time with Alvin and Peggy will probably be more patient than I was. I’m hoping the next book, Alvin Journeyman, will be more exciting.I’m reading Blackstone Audio’s production which is narrated by Orson Scott Card, Stefan Rudnicki, and Gabrielle de Cuir. They are doing a great job, but I had to speed them up.
I liked this one a bit more than the first two, and would've given it a 3.5 instead of 3 if I could. It doesn't deserve a 4, however. Having been a long time OSC reader, I surprisingly sit on the fence when it comes to my opinion of him. He's written two of the best books I've read, Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead. There are a few VERY good ones, like Lovelock. And then, there's some atrocious pieces, like the last two of the Ender series, or Songmaster. In addition, his writing can be anywhere from acceptable to "who told you semi colons and commas were interchangeable?" kind of bad. He also tends to be on the preachy side.Anyway. The Alvin Maker series, so far... isn't bad. There are so many parts where his ideas just strike me as stupid. Like the whole making-unmaking thing. Or the crystal city idea. Or the fact that Alvin is essentially a Christ figure (come to think of it, Ender was also a Christ figure, but in a different way), what with his magical healing powers, his ability to command atoms to be or not to be, etc. Or the fact that the whole Alvin Maker series reminds you of how the author is Mormon. The whole Mistress Modesty bit also made me wince. And don't even get me started on how stupid the idea is to make Taleswapper into William Blake. I mean, come on.But when it comes down to it, Orson Scott Card really is a good story teller, and whenever I put the book down it is with some reluctance. The third book is also a bit darker than the first two; the scenes involving Cavil became a bit hard to stomach, although bordering on ridiculous. There are a few moments that almost made me want to tear up. That's another thing - I'm not particularly attached to or smitten by any character, but OSC has managed to make me very fond of them, which is more than what most authors have done to me.In short, it was an enjoyable and fast read, and I still intend to follow through with what Alvin and his idiotic foes are up to in the next 3 books.
What do You think about Prentice Alvin (1991)?
« Je suis le Faiseur, dont la torche parlait, se dit Alvin. Elle a vu que j'avais en moi de quoi devenir un Faiseur. Faut que je trouve cette fille et faut qu'elle me dise ce qu'elle a vu. Parce que je le sais : si je possède ces pouvoirs que je me suis découverts, ce n'est pas uniquement pour tailler de la pierre sans les mains, guérir les malades ni courir dans les bois comme les hommes rouges. J'ai une tâche à remplir dans la vie et je n'ai pas l'ombre d'une idée sur la façon de m'y préparer. » Apprenti forgeron, apprenti Faiseur, Alvin est de retour dans son village natal. Sur sa route se dresse encore, multiforme, son mystérieux ennemi. « Le Faiseur, c'est celui qui fait partie de ce qu'il crée », dit l'Oiseau rouge... http://www.amazon.fr/Chroniques-dAlvin-Faiseur-LApprenti/dp/2070415767
—Christophe
Orson Scott Card is one of those writers who seems to have great ideas for how to begin sagas but can quickly lose focus sometime around the third book. I found this to be the case with the Ender saga, which had two superb initial installments before a third novel that signalled a slow but eventual decline in quality.As I read the Alvin Maker saga, I am worried the same thing may be happenening here. I'm not sure if I'd read this one before. There were moments in the story that I kept having an overwhelming feeling of deja-vu while there were other parts of the story that felt completely unfamilar. I've had the book in my to be read pile for a while and I can't help but wonder if I've read it before.Anyway, that's neither here nor there. "Prentice Alvin" covers seven years of Alvin's life as he works as an apprentice for a blacksmith. The story also shows the parallel story of Peggy, who has been involved in Alvin's life since the day she was born and is destined to play a large role in the future. On the day Alvin arrives in town, Peggy realizes that Alvin will love her and marry her in the future out of a sense of duty rather than a true love and desire for her. So, she leaves town suddenly and Alvin comes in to spend his years working. Along the way, we get some darker moments to the saga, such as Alvin's battle with the UnMaker over the digging of a well and a lot of time spent discussing the evils of slavery. Alvin toils along and while he can be fallible at times, he never does anything really big enough to derail his destiny or to cause any long term damage to his role as the Maker. In short, Alvin comes close to royally screwing up, but always manages to pull back from the abyss. And that may be why I found the book so frustrating. Alvin's abilities are fascinating and seeing how and when he choose to use them in nicely done. But the whole battle with the unMaker and the tempation with the digging of the well could and should have been more compelling. If Alvin is a Christ-figure, I guess you could equate this to his time in the wilderness being tempted. But there's such a lack of any real interaction between the two that it comes off as pretty unsatisfying in the end.There are also some moments intended as plot twists that are a bit far too obvious. The biggest being the real identity of the school teacher. Thankfully Card doesn't drag this out too long, but it does it enough that it began to bother me that no one else realize who it was. (I won't say since this happens in the later third of the novel and could be SPOILER territory). Maybe this book is setting up a lot of things for pay-off in future novels. If that's so I may come back and re-examine my rating for this book then. Until then, I have to say that it's the weakest isntallment of the series so far.
—Michael
This book is another good step along the story arc, but what keeps me from rating it higher is the author's version of philosophy that permeates the series and pulls me away from the story. His philosophy seems to mingle religion and his personal views and sentiments. This philosophy doesn't seem to be presented as a fantasy philosophy, but as a real philosophy. This may be what is done in most books, but it feels far from reality, yet presented as truth. I can't reconcile it.What's more, there are what could be considered homages to events in the history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. To me, these events are important and have emotional meaning. In my mind it it dishonors the events to mirror them in this fantasy world with the author's mingled philosophy.Yet, what keeps me reading the series is the author's amazing gift of creating characters that seem to live in my mind and compel me to know them more.
—Brett
