Seventh son

Orson Scott Card

Book - 1988

In an alternate version of frontier America, young Alvin is the seventh son of a seventh son, and such a birth is powerful magic. Yet even in the loving safety of his home, dark forces reach out to destroy him.

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SCIENCE FICTION/Card, Orson Scott
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1st Floor SCIENCE FICTION/Card, Orson Scott Due Sep 20, 2024
Subjects
Genres
Alternative histories (Fiction), American
Fantasy fiction
Fiction
History
Science fiction
Published
New York : T. Doherty Associates 1988.
Language
English
Main Author
Orson Scott Card (author)
Other Authors
Dennis Nolan, 1945- (illustrator), Carol Russo (designer), Alan McKnight
Edition
1st mass market edition
Item Description
Novel.
Cover art by Dennis Nolan, cover design by Carol Russo, maps by Alan McKnight
"A Tor book."
Physical Description
241 pages : maps ; 18 cm
ISBN
9780812533538
9780812533057
  • Chapter 1. Bloody Mary
  • Chapter 2. Wagon People
  • Chapter 3. Spring House
  • Chapter 4. Hatrack River
  • Chapter 5. Caul
  • Chapter 6. Ridgebeam
  • Chapter 7. Altar
  • Chapter 8. Visitor
  • Chapter 9. Taleswapper
  • Chapter 10. Visions
  • Chapter 11. Millstone
  • Chapter 12. Book
  • Chapter 13. Surgery
  • Chapter 14. Chastisement
  • Chapter 15. Promises
Review by Booklist Review

Alvin, born seventh son of a seventh son, is destined for greatness, but something evil is trying to keep him from growing up. (My 1 87 Upfront)

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

From the award-winning Ender's Game on, each of Card's last three novels has featured a secular saint, less a character than a catalyst to galvanize those around him into reexamining the thorny moral tangles in which they live. This first volume of the Tales of Alvin Maker introduces young Alvin Miller Jr., the seventh son of a seventh son, who lives on the frontier of an alternate early 19th century America, where folk magic such as faith healing and second sight really works. While Alvin embarks on his mythic struggle against the Unmaker of all things, he is watched over by a flesh and blood guardian angel; he is pursued by the rigid, zealous Reverend Thrower; and he is guided by the wandering Taleswapper, William Blake. This beguiling book recalls Robert Penn Warren in its robust but reflective blend of folktale, history, parable and personal testimony, pioneer narrative. The series promises to be (in Warren's phrase) a ``story of deep delight.'' (July 31) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review

YA Set in the Northwest Territory in the late 18th Century, this is an American fantasy in the tradition of T. H. White's Sword in the Stone (Putnam, 1939). Mixing fantasy with philosophy and historical figures with imaginary ones, this first book in the ``Tales of Alvin Maker'' series succeeds on several levels. Alvin Miller, seventh son of a seventh son, is heir to great powers that he must learn to use and control. A rich cast of characters try either to help or destroy Alvin in his childhood. It is apparent that Alvin is the focus of gathering forces of good and evil preparing for battle. Readers will be left at the end of the book wondering what will happen to young Alvin in his coming apprenticeship. The sequel will be eagerly awaited. Mary Williams, Harris County Public Library (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review

First of a series from Card (Ender's Game; Speaker For the Dead), set in an alternate-world frontier America (early 19th century) west of the Appalachee Mountains, where folk magic works, a stern Lord Protector still rules in Britain, and Red men live peaceably (most of the time) alongside their colonist neighbors. Young Alvin Miller, born with a caul, is the seventh son of a seventh son, and thus highly magical: he can work miracles of healing, and effortlessly manipulates stone and wood; he may even be a Maker, one able to remake the world according to his own desires (Alvin is warned in a vision, however, not to use his gifts selfishly). But there are powers in the world apparently determined to prevent Alvin from growing up: evil spirits of water, which frequently try to kill him; his own father, plagued by terrible and irrational urges to harm the the boy he loves; the Reverend Thrower, a Scottish minister convinced that Alvin is the devil's spawn; and the Unmaker, a shimmery, ill defined thing that Alvin keeps at bay by small creative acts. Still, Alvin has useful friends, among them the itinerant story-teller, Taleswapper, and an unknown benefactor who helps Alvin through long distance magic. Card has uncovered a rich vein of folklore and magic here, to which his assured handling of old-time religion and manifest love of children is admirably suited: an appealing and intriguing effort, and his best so far. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

SEVENTH SON (Chapter 1: Bloody Mary) LITTLE PEGGY WAS VERY CAREFUL with the eggs. She rooted her hand through the straw till her fingers bumped something hard and heavy. She gave no never mind to the chicken drips. After all, when folk with babies stayed at the roadhouse, Mama never even crinkled her face at their most spetackler diapers. Even when the chicken drips were wet and stringy and made her fingers stick together, little Peggy gave no never mind. She just pushed the straw apart, wrapped her hand around the egg, and lifted it out of the brood box. All this while standing tiptoe on a wobbly stool, reaching high above her head. Mama said she was too young for egging, but little Peggy showed her. Every day she felt in every brood box and brought in every egg, every single one, that's what she did. Every one, she said in her mind, over and over. I got to reach into every one. Then little Peggy looked back into the northeast corner, the darkest place in the whole coop, and there sat Bloody Mary in her brood box, looking like the devil's own bad dream, hatefulness shining out of her nasty eyes, saying Come here little girl and give me nips. I want nips of finger and nips of thumb and if you come real close and try to take my egg I'll get a nip of eye from you. Most animals didn't have much heartfire, but Bloody Mary's was strong and made a poison smoke. Nobody else could see it, but little Peggy could. Bloody Mary dreamed of death for all folks, but most specially for a certain little girl five years old, and little Peggy had the marks on her fingers to prove it. At least one mark, anyway, and even if Papa said he couldn't see it, little Peggy remembered how she got it and nobody could blame her none if she sometimes forgot to reach under Bloody Mary who sat there like a bushwhacker waiting to kill the first folks that just tried to come by. Nobody'd get mad if she just sometimes forgot to look there. I forgot. I looked in every brood box, every one, and if one got missed then I forgot forgot forgot. Everybody knew Bloody Mary was a lowdown chicken and too mean to give any eggs that wasn't rotten anyway. I forgot. She got the egg basket inside before Mama even had the fire bet, and Mama was so pleased she let little Peggy put the eggs one by one into the cold water. Then Mama put the pot on the hook and swung it right on over the fire. Boiling eggs you didn't have to wait for the fire to slack, you could do it smoke and all. "Peg," said Papa. That was Mama's name, but Papa didn't say it in his Mama voice. He said it in his little-Peggy-you're-in-dutch voice, and little Peggy knew she was completely found out, and so she turned right around and yelled what she'd been planning to say all along. "I forgot, Papa!" Mama turned and looked at little Peggy in surprise. Papa wasn't surprised though. He just raised an eyebrow. He was holding his hand behind his back. Little Peggy knew there was an egg in that hand. Bloody Mary's nasty egg. "What did you forget, little Peggy?" asked Papa, talking soft. Right that minute little Peggy reckoned she was the stupidest girl ever born on the face of the earth. Here she was denying before anybody accused her of anything. But she wasn't going to give up, not right off like that. She couldn't stand to have them mad at her and she just wanted them to let her go away and live in England. So she put on her innocent face and said, "I don't know, Papa." She figgered England was the best place to go live, cause England had a Lord Protector. From the look in Papa's eye, a Lord Protector was pretty much what she needed just now. "What did you forget?" Papa asked again. "Just say it and be done, Horace," said Mama. "If she's done wrong then she's done wrong." "I forgot one time, Papa," said little Peggy. "She's a mean old chicken and she hates me." Papa answered soft and slow. "One time," he said. Then he took his hand from behind him. Only it wasn't no single egg he held, it was a whole basket. And that basket was filled with a clot of straw--most likely all the straw from Bloody Mary's box--and that straw was mashed together and glued tight with dried-up raw egg and shell bits, mixed up with about three or four chewed-up baby chicken bodies. "Did you have to bring that in the house before breakfast, Horace?" said Mama. "I don't know what makes me madder," said Horace. "What she done wrong or her studying up to lie about it." "I didn't study and I didn't lie!" shouted little Peggy. Or anyways she meant to shout. What came out sounded espiciously like crying even though little Peggy had decided only yesterday that she was done with crying for the rest of her life. "See?" said Mama. "She already feels bad." "She feels bad being caught," said Horace. "You're too slack on her, Peg. She's got a lying spirit. I don't want my daughter growing up wicked. I'd rather see her dead like her baby sisters before I see her grow up wicked." Little Peggy saw Mama's heartfire flare up with memory, and in front of her eyes she could see a baby laid out pretty in a little box, and then another one only not so pretty cause it was the second baby Missy, the one what died of pox so nobody'd touch her but her own mama, who was still so feeble from the pox herself that she couldn't do much. Little Peggy saw that scene, and she knew Papa had made a mistake to say what he said cause Mama's face went cold even though her heartfire was hot. "That's the wickedest thing anybody ever said in my presence," said Mama. Then she took up the basket of corruption from the table and carried it outside. "Bloody Mary bites my hand," said little Peggy. "We'll see what bites," said Papa. "For leaving the eggs I give you one whack, because I reckon that lunatic hen looks fearsome to a frog-size girl like you. But for telling lies I give you ten whacks." Little Peggy cried in earnest at that news. Papa gave an honest count and full measure in everything, but most especially in whacks. Papa took the hazel rod off the high shelf. He kept it up there ever since little Peggy put the old one in the fire and burnt it right up. "I'd rather hear a thousand hard and bitter truths from you, Daughter, than one soft and easy lie," said he, and then he bent over and laid on with the rod across her thighs. Whick whick whick, she counted every one, they stung her to the heart, each one of them, they were so full of anger. Worst of all she knew it was all unfair because his heartfire raged for a different cause altogether, and it always did. Papa's hate for wickedness always came from his most secret memory. Little Peggy didn't understand it all, because it was twisted up and confused and Papa didn't remember it right well himself. All little Peggy ever saw plain was that it was a lady and it wasn't Mama. Papa thought of that lady whenever something went wrong. When baby Missy died of nothing at all, and then the next baby also named Missy died of pox, and then the barn burnt down once, and a cow died, everything that went wrong made him think of that lady and he began to talk about how much he hated wickedness and at those times the hazel rod flew hard and sharp. I'd rather hear a thousand hard and bitter truths, that's what he said, but little Peggy knew that there was one truth he didn't ever want to hear, and so she kept it to herself. She'd never shout it at him, even if it made him break the hazel rod, cause whenever she thought of saying aught about that lady, she kept picturing her father dead, and that was a thing she never hoped to see for real. Besides, the lady that haunted his heartfire, she didn't have no clothes on, and little Peggy knew that she'd be whipped for sure if she talked about people being naked. So she took the whacks and cried till she could taste that her nose was running. Papa left the room right away, and Mama came back to fix up breakfast for the blacksmith and the visitors and the hands, but neither one said boo to her, just as if they didn't even notice. She cried even harder and louder for a minute, but it didn't help. Finally she picked up her Bugy from the sewing basket and walked all stiff-legged out to Oldpappy's cabin and woke him right up. He listened to her story like he always did. "I know about Bloody Mary," he said, "and I told your papa fifty times if I told him once, wring that chicken's neck and be done. She's a crazy bird. Every week or so she gets crazy and breaks all her own eggs, even the ones ready to hatch. Kills her own chicks. It's a lunatic what kills its own." "Papa like to killed me," said little Peggy. "I reckon if you can walk somewhat it ain't so bad altogether." "I can't walk much." "No, I can see you're nigh crippled forever," said Oldpappy. "But I tell you what, the way I see it your mama and your papa's mostly mad at each other. So why don't you just disappear for a couple of hours?" "I wish I could turn into a bird and fly." "Next best thing, though," said Pappy, "is to have a secret place where nobody knows to look for you. Do you have a place like that? No, don't tell me--it wrecks it if you tell even a single other person. You just go to that place for a while. As long as it's a safe place, not out in the woods where a Red might take your pretty hair, and not a high place where you might fall off, and not a tiny place where you might get stuck." "It's big and it's low and it ain't in the woods," said little Peggy. "Then you go there, Maggie." Little Peggy made the face she always made when Oldpappy called her that. And she held up Bugy and in Bugy's squeaky high voice she said, "Her name is Peggy." "You go there, Piggy, if you like that better--" Little Peggy slapped Bugy right across Oldpappy's knee. "Someday Bugy'll do that once too often and have a rupture and die," said Oldpappy. But Bugy just danced right in his face and insisted, "Not piggy, Peggy!" "That's right, Puggy, you go to that secret place and if anybody says, We got to go find that girl, I'll say, I know where she is and she'll come back when she's good and ready." Little Peggy ran for the cabin door and then stopped and turned. "Oldpappy, you're the nicest grown-up in the whole world." "Your papa has a different view of me, but that's all tied up with another hazel rod that I laid hand on much too often. Now run along." She stopped again right before she closed the door. "You're the only nice grown-up!" She shouted it real loud, halfway hoping that they could hear it clear inside the house. Then she was gone, right across the garden, out past the cow pasture, up the hill into the woods, and along the path to the spring house. SEVENTH SON Copyright © 1987 by Orson Scott Card Excerpted from Seventh Son by Orson Scott Card All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.