Second book in the series, first in my heart. As in all time favorite books. This is my absolute #1 comfort book. I have lost track of how often i have read it. (Guess that makes it seem like I need lots of comfort, but I just love the book that much.)
I honestly believe that "Seventh Son", the first book in the series, and "Red Prophet" could be combined into a single volume and established as a middle school / high school required reading selection. Filled with insight both profound and subtle, characters complex and elegant, symbolism both blaring and quiet, it also delivers numerous messages both ageless and timely.
I don't really consider it a spoiler to reveal that Alvin and the Red Prophet meet (they are, after all, in the cover together), but that prophetic meeting, in my humble opinion, is one of the most powerful scenes in literature i have ever read.

After the first book I plowed right into this one. I found myself a little bored and wondering why we were spending so much time on the banter between various people of political power here, but there was a huge payoff. Alvin's character development here is really cool, as he learns to protect his brother when they are abducted, learns to live and travel listening to the green music like a native, see grand visions with the prophet, and save his brother through use of a powerful native holy place. The depravity of the really evil characters, and even some of the good ones is masterfully developed. Fantastic reading.

Continuing my re-read... I definitely remembered alot of more of the events and characters in this book than in the first one. In fact, in mind a good portion is the beginning of the story.. its funny how the mind plays tricks like that.

Trying to work out the alternate history part in this one becomes impossible... at one point one of the character (Lafayette, I think?) says England had been a republic for a century and a half, yet they still talk about the king. So I guess he's going for Cromwell never lost? But then why is there still a king? And then he's got Robespierre and Napoleon as both being important at the same time... that especially hurts my head.

The image of the curse of the people from Vigor Church is just amazing... stuff like this is why Card is a memorable writer I can keep going back to.

In the first book of the series, Alvin has a dream vision of a one-eyed Indian. This Indian taught him one of the greatest lessons of his life. In this book, we learn more about this Indian and his role in Alvin's life. Now Alvin is older and sets out traveling with his brother to start his apprenticeship as a blacksmith. They never make it to their destination but get tied up in a frontier dispute between the Indians and the White man leading to the battle of Tippecanoe. This book was so interesting. It was fanciful but weaved into actual historical events and people. Of course, the audiobook narrators were outstanding. It is one of the reasons I love listening to Orson Scott Card's books in the audio format.

I read this one because I wanted to read more of Alvin's journey but there was too much of Bonaparte and La Fayette and Ta-kumsa, etc. It was a good read but not what I wanted or expected. I will give the next part a try and then decide if I like this series or not. I definitely like the story of Alvin, Peggy, Taleswapper, and even the Red Prophet. But the other parts were quite boring to me.

The first book in the series was very good, but left me wanting more. Well, this was exactly the more I was looking for. The world really gets expanded and fleshed out in impressive ways. I wasn't expecting that a detour from the path to apprenticeship would have interested me, but this was absolutely the right type of story to tell in this world. Some of the real persons that OSC has included really intrigue me as to how far he could go with developing this world. Hopefully that interest doesn't leave me disappointed if this ends up being a dangling thread he chooses to do nothing with. I am now ravenously anticipating reading further in the series now.

The tale is convincing in its plot, pulling the reader along to each dreadful event. With expressive descriptions, colorful conversations, alluring story aspects, and wondrous characters, this secondary tale in the saga raises the roof for the world Card created. The protagonist is swept up into the strife of the land and the persons' ambitions who live on it. With careful and deliberate mapping, the author's vision is presented well and makes for an intriguing climb into the following installments.

The sections about Alvin’s family and about the Native Americans were compelling (though some of the depiction of Native Americans did not age *well, though *I found it just a bit uncomfortable rather than outright offensive). I didn’t find any of the sections dealing with other American or French historical figures quite so interesting; they all seemed much more one-dimensional, but that might be just a fact of *my not remembering as much of the real history from this time period, so it *was harder for me to recognize where Card made his departures from real history. The developments in terms of the magic were very interesting, and the philosophical reflections were often surprisingly moving. The writing was more uneven that I would have expected, at times are very good, but at times also kind of clunky. The action also dragged a fair bit. so I enjoyed this in some ways, but I’m also not super motivated to start the next book right away. Knowing that Card has not yet finished the Alvin *Maker series, I think I will hold off on reading more of the books until he ultimately hopefully does.

*Edited to add: format notes - *listened to the Blackstone audiobook read by Scott,Brick, Stefan Rudnicki, and Stephen Hoye, who did an excellent job. I would say Hoye was my least favorite of the three narrators, though that’s mostly because i’m such a big fan of both Brick’s and Rudnicki’s narration (I often go out of my way to read books just because they’ve narrated them) and he did a very good job with accents for the French characters. this book also didn’t have the issues I found with the Blackstone recording of SEVENTH SON where the narrator sometimes switched confusingly; luckily, in this book, the narrators were kept consistent by chapter and point of view character. Overall very well done, and I definitely recommend consuming this book in audio format.

This second book in the series falls prey to OSC's tragic flaw as a literary hero: he starts with a germ of a story that it is intense and compelling and spins it out into so many layers and tangents that the original germ gets buried and overwhelmed. I had more patience for this approach in the Ender series, because Children of the Mind was so unexpectedly and startlingly brilliant. In this series, it feels more unnecessary, or like filler. This probably didn't need to be a whole book--it could have been a novella, or a flashback section or prequel to the next title when Alvin starts his apprenticeship. But there are moments that are, as in all of OSC's writing, deeply compelling, and there is lots to reflect here on what it means to be human and ethical and good.

This was another of the books in my quest to read Hugo award winners. This book is #2 in a series. I had read the first book in the series a long time ago and didn't really care for the universe Mr. Card created, a fact which applies to this novel. Although the book was well written and had an interesting tale to tell, there is something about the alternative colonial America that rubs me the wrong way.

This tale is essentially about a race of similar indigenous humans deal with similar European invaders into their world. I won't give any spoiler, but I will say the end result appears to be very different from what happened in our reality.

The characters are well portrayed and seem very much alive and real. Many names which many Americans (Both Canadian and US citizens, as well as some Mexican ones) are similar, although phonetically spelled out in some cases. It was a good novel, but definitely not Mr. Card's best. (For me, that honor is given to Ender's Game).

Deuxième de la série de fantasy "Alvin le faiseur" d'Orson Scott Card.

Le roman se passe dans les années 1800 et dans une Amérique où les sortilèges et les pouvoirs existent. L'histoire se concentre surtout sur deux frères amérindiens : L'un, un grand guerrier charismatique, et l'autre, un chaman puissant. Et les deux ont une solution différente face à l'invasion de l'homme blanc; le guerrier veut les bouter hors de l'Amérique et les renvoyer en Europe, le chaman veut séparer le territoire entre les amérindiens d'un côté et l'homme blanc de l'autre. Et, bien sûr, Alvin, le septième fils, avec ses pouvoirs en développement, va se trouver mêlé à tout cela.

L'auteur a réussi, par le rythme de son histoire, à surmonter mon scepticisme, et ce n'est pas facile.

Son talent de conteur m'a permis d'apprécier cette histoire que j'ai bien aimée.

you know, there's nothing wrong with these books. i certainly enjoy them. and I can absolutely see why I must have enjoyed them as a child. I would have adored all this indian and magic pioneer days stuff. Actually, I have a very rare memory of selecting this series in the library, while looking for another book altogether. And I remember loving the magic, the way he crafted the stone and healed his own body in book 1. It's pretty rare for me to remember stuff from that long ago, much less something only in a book, so this must have left quite the impression. But despite the death and the torture and the grown up characters, this nonetheless feels like a child's tale. Hard to say what it is, exactly. Maybe it's overly moralizing? Hard to say. It's not like I bristle at the moral message, it's just that it has the kind of message an intentionally-crafted children's movie would have.