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The Crystal City (Tales of Alvin Maker, Book 6)

The Crystal City (Tales of Alvin Maker, Book 6)

List Price: $25.95
Your Price: $10.38
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Was not what I hoped for
Review: Like other readers I eagerly awaited the release of "The Crystal City." But unlike other readers I was disappointed in the book. At its best is it excellent in the story layout and characters. It was classic "Card" but I thought he tried too hard to bring in components of the first five books and that detracted from the story line a great deal.

Lets face it. We are avid readers of the "Maker" series and so much detail from previous books just pumped up the page count. I found the ending the most disappointing of all. When I hit the last page I felt as if I should be able to turn the page and finish reading the ending and it just was not there.

What he did do was make me look forward to the next book to see how this one should have ended. It is worth the buy for sure, but you may be upset at how it ends...

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Another Orson Scott Card series peters out...
Review: Like the Ender seriers did with Children of the Mind and the Homecoming series did with Earthborn, the Alvin Maker series sputters to a conclusion (hopefully) in The Crystal City.

Not that this book was terrible, but it just didn't seem to have any purpose other than gettin Alvin and his followers to the Crystal City, and there just wasn't anything interesting enough that happened along the way. I think they were all too good, and too powerful, that you knew they would always do the right thing, and you also knew that they always could, so there wasn't any doubt about the conclusion.

If you've read the rest of the series, you'll probably want to read this book just for closure, just don't expect much.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: I had hoped this would be much better
Review: Maybe my tastes are changing. I've really liked almost every Orson Scott Card book since I first read Ender's Game many years ago. I searched out books that weren't as well known or as easily available and found even greater appreciation for his work (check out Folk of the Fringe, Lost Boys and Enchantment for great reading). I followed him through several different series, some of which were just okay (the Homecoming series) and some were great. One series, The Tales of Alvin Maker was just a step below Ender, in my opinion...until I read the latest entry, The Crystal City.
The characters were there, some action was there, but so much of the book was overblown soul searching that it got to the point where I was skipping paragraphs at a time, just to get on with the story. His wife misleads him, she does it for his own good, she should be with someone else, he should have more respect for his brother-in-law, he does what he thinks is best, his wife does what she thinks is best, Dead Mary loves Alvin, Dead Mary loves Arthur, Dead Mary doesn't really love anyone, blah, blah, blah.
Card has some points he wants to get across, and Hey! - He wrote the book-so it is his right! But, come on, naming his creation "The Tabernacle", is just a little obvious. And just to confuse things, this comes after another character had just named it "The Observatory". I went back to reread that section just to see if there was a reason for naming it twice, but if there was, Orson didn't really get it across.
When I had read the 3rd and 4th installments of this series, I actually thought this was going to be better than the Ender series. This was a huge let down. As a reader that has bought well over 25 Orson Scott Card books, I felt like this was a rip-off.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Jonathan W Miller Place, NY
Review: Of all the books in the Alvin maker series, Crytal City is by far the worste. The reasons for this are two fold but in essence you get tired of Alvin's Whinney attitude throught out the entire book.
He is almost afraid to do anything for fear of corupting someone with his powers.
Their is almost no mention of the unmaker in the book. Hence Alvin has no real villian to pit himself against. As such the book becomes a moral dialogue about the wrongness of slavery, bigotry, and discrimination.
As such the story gets bogged down in values. Values of an America that never was.

Safe travels:

David

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The Best by the Best
Review: The Crystal City amazes. It's a perfect follow-up to the other books in the series, and it may very well be one of the greatest fantasy series ever written. Mr. Card is simply the best writer of his generation and perhaps one of the best in the world. I believe that this book will garner Mr. Card hundreds of thousands of more fans than he already has. I loved this book; I was enthralled all the way through. I even bought three copies to pass along to friends. This book will change your life and make you a fan . . . if you aren't already one.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The New Exodus
Review: The Crystal City is the sixth novel in the Tales of Alvin Maker series, following Heartfire. In the previous volume, Alvin and Verily Cooper convinced Judge Adams that the witchcraft charges brought against Purity Orphan and Alvin were backed only by hearsay and outright perjury and that their knacks were given by God upon birth, so the court suspended the licenses for all interrogators (or witchers) for their grievous malfeasance in office. Since a licensed interrogator was required to prosecute a witchcraft charge, Judge Adams dismissed all charges against Purity and Alvin pending restoral of such licenses.

Immediately after completion of the trial, Alvin and Arthur ran with the greensong toward Camelot to rescue Calvin and Peggy. Since Calvin was close to dying, Peggy convinced Gullah Joe to use powerful potions to raise Calvin to consciousness. Peggy then coaxed Calvin (with a little remote help from Alvin) into flooding the land near the river, thus driving all of the agitated slaves to higher ground. Thereupon, Peggy talked Calvin into storing his heartfire within a magical box just prior to his death. When Alvin arrived, he managed to repair enough of Calvin's corpse to support a small trickle of heartfire back into the corpse, which kept the repaired parts working while he moved on to repair other parts, until Calvin was restored to full life.

Despite Peggy's best efforts, King Arthur and his advisors refused to listen to her explanation that the uprising was an unfortunate accident resulting in no real harm. Instead, they insisted on making an example of the slaves who had stirred up so much fear. John Calhoun wanted to hang a third of the slaves, but was finally convinced to execute only twenty of those involved in the uprising. When the news of these executions reached the northern territories, however, a great public outcry was raised against any further accommodations with the slaveholders.

In this novel, Peggy is pregnant again and living in her father's roadhouse, but she has sent Alvin and Arthur down the Mizzippy to Neuva Barcelona -- i.e., New Orleans -- in an attempt to avoid the upcoming war over slavery. On the trip down the river, they have had several enlightening experiences and met a number of interesting people, including a failed storekeeper from Noisy River named Abe Lincoln. They also have had another encounter with Jim Bowie, a killer with a big knife who plans to join Steven Austin's expedition into Mexico.

After reaching New Orleans, they find lodgings with Mama Squirrel, Papa Moose and their dozens of kids in a large boarding house. While they wait for some sign of their task, Alvin and Arthur help with the chores and gather information with the help of the kids and soon find that Neuva Barcelona is filled with plots and conspiracies. One day, as they are getting water from a public foundation, a young woman named Dead Mary asks Alvin to heal her mama, Rien, who has yellow fever. While not sure of his ability to cure the disease, Alvin goes with the young woman to a shack in swamp and repairs all the damage that he can discover with his doodlebug, focusing particularly on her liver and blood vessels, and clears away the rotting blood under her skin.

Alvin's gross repairs help Rien to heal her own body, but doesn't even touch the disease itself. Rien becomes a carrier of the infection that spreads via the swamp mosquitoes throughout the city. As the disease spreads, Alvin continues to heal as many people as possible in the area around his lodgings, but other people notice that there is a circle of wellness centered on his boarding house. A crowd gathers around the building with torches, egged on by rumors spread by Jim Bowie. Then Arthur uses his knack to extinguish all the torches and the crowd gets really spooked and runs away.

Alvin is summoned by the local voodooienne, La Tia, and learns that the townsmen are working themselves into a mob which will attack others in addition to his friends and himself. She says that he must lead an exodus of slaves and poor out of Neuva Barcelona. Calvin helps by shrouding the city in fog, then Alvin and Arthur lead the crowd of thousands out of the city and across Lake Pontchartrain on a bridge made of crystallized water. Gathering more migrants as they go, Alvin takes them all to the future site of the Crystal City.

This story reflects the flight of the Hebrews from Egypt as well as the repeated escapes of Joseph Smith and his followers from persecution. The people following Alvin are not only black slaves, but also free colored and poor creoles. They are escaping not just de jure slavery, but also a climate of de facto persecution that limits their freedoms and threatens their lives.

This migration culminates all prior efforts by Alvin to break the social constraints of class, color and wealth. This exodus does not wrest their promised land from the prior inhabitants, but instead tames an unwanted wilderness which they then open to all others who wish to settle there. Their new freedom will not be at the expense of others.

This volume ends with the first foundations of the new utopia, but already the snakes have started to gather. The new city may be a paradise, but all the people therein will not be paragons of virtue. The next volume in this series should indicate how Alvin will handle dissent and corruption in the Crystal City.

Highly recommended for Card fans and for anyone else who enjoys tales of temptation, morality and social justice among people with powerful and fantastic talents.

-Arthur W. Jordin

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Take it out from the library
Review: The sixth book of the Tales of Alvin Maker feels a lot like the increasingly tired books at the end of the Ender series. It's not that the book is boring--I read it in two sittings--but although the plot is fine, it's simply not as well crafted as the earlier volumes in the series, and it shows. For one, the earlier books had a distinctive narrator, a sort of folksy presence that was clearly of the world of the book, but that is completely absent from this book, making the book read more like notes for a screen play than a coherent whole. Secondly, there's no overarching plot arc that makes this book stand alone the way the others in the series could--it feels more like the collected other adventures of Alvin Maker, and not like a coherent whole where the plot tensions pull the book to its conclusions. Third, the book has a strange quality that it does not take place immediately after the events in Heartfire. There's nothing wrong with that, per se--it might even be interesting, except that in this case a lot of the emotional tension from the previous book is just gone. Peggy and Alvin are separated again, their baby stillborn, and although you are told about Alvin's guilt in not being able to save his child you don't get to see it, and it carries little weight--it feels for most of the book that they've drifted apart, but I'm not sure that's the intention. At the end of the last book, Verily Cooper has found new love, but Purity is almost entirely gone from this book, with some hints that their romance went nowhere. Calvin is back, but all the rapproachment between him and Alvin is gone--which is probably realistic, but very unsatisfying after the last book where we see a seachange in Alvin's brother. Because of the flat narrative voice and this bizarre missing chapters, the book tells us a lot, but shows us nothing, and as a result, we don't feel at all like we're there, the way Card mananges to do in the previous five books. The first five books are so exceptional, so satisfying, that it is probably not surprising that it was hard to sustain it further, but I hope that if Card gives his readers another installment, he will care more about the craft that makes his best books worth reading over and over again.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Not up to Card's usual standard
Review: The story begins by with a huge knowledge gap between this and the previous book. Some years have passed and the character dynamics have changed considerably without much in the way of background being provided. Similarly, the book ends leaving the reader with the distinct feeling that there is room for another book. That is, the story is not finished. I felt that the book was unworthy of the previous five and appeared to be written to fulfill a contractual obligation. I did not feel as though the author's heart was really in it (in fact, it could almost have been written by somebody else) although it is a good yarn. Orson Scott Card fans must read the series, but be prepared for some disappointment with this last book.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Not his best work, and not the best in the Alvin series
Review: This book was interesting because I liked the characters. Other than that, though, it felt really... incomplete. It seemed to skip (although referring to) a lot of things that'd happened since the last book in the series, and how the action fit in with everything that was going on in North America at the time just wasn't clear.

OSC is usually better than this; one wonders if he's starting to slip. Personally, I doubt it, but then I'm not objective; I love the guy and suck up whatever he writes. :)

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Alvin's quest continues
Review: This is an epic quest journey, somewhat akin to Stephen King's "Dark Tower" series, but without the overwriting that makes Mr. King's books lethal weapons if dropped on your foot. This is a fantasy that takes place in an alternate America, one in which some people have "knacks", that is, the ability to do unusual things . Our hero through the six books of the quest so far is Alvin Maker, who can do a lot of things very well, but he's burdened with an overcautious conscience, that often propels him into trouble, and keeps him from using his "knacks" to extricate him from these troubles. I like the series because we meet historical characters in often quite different contexts from their historical reputations, and the geography of the country is greatly different from actuality. It's a tale worth telling, and a tale I enjoy very much reading!


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