{"id":1631,"date":"2019-08-07T15:00:49","date_gmt":"2019-08-07T21:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/?p=1631"},"modified":"2019-08-04T19:47:39","modified_gmt":"2019-08-05T01:47:39","slug":"book-prentice-alvin-1989","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/2019\/08\/07\/book-prentice-alvin-1989\/","title":{"rendered":"BOOK: Prentice Alvin (1989)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"PrenticePrentice Alvin
\n<\/u><\/strong>Year: 1989
\nAuthor: Orson Scott Card
\nLength: 830 minutes \/ 13.83 hours<\/p>\n

As I\u2019ve been reading through the Tales of Alvin Maker<\/em> series, I have found it interesting to see what big societal issues have been covered so far. While Seventh Son<\/em><\/a> tackled religion and Red Prophet<\/em><\/a> delved into politics and war, Prentice Alvin<\/em> bit off a big chunk of racism and tried to address it in a way that\u2019s half fantasy and half historical fiction. Sure, there\u2019s still some semblance of the religion content present in this book that informs the racism dialogue. Still, these large issues end up taking a back seat to the more fascinating aspects of the titular character learning how to control his incredible powers.<\/p>\n

In fact, this might be my favorite book of the series so far. It\u2019s always more entertaining to watch a character come into the depth of their abilities, and Prentice Alvin<\/em> has this in spades (both metaphorically and literally). While there weren\u2019t many instances of Alvin directly being affected by a conflict that would require him to grow as a character, there were enough inevitable plot points that made me wonder how he would handle the situation. These twists helped to enforce the world-building that Orson Scott Card has excelled at for some time.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the reason why I like this book as compared to its two predecessors comes down to how it focused more on the \u201cmagic\u201d of this alternate history and less on the similarities to the American historical context. I\u2019ve never been much of a fan of historical fiction, but I do appreciate explaining the events of the past through the lens of magical realism or fantasy. It\u2019s likely why I\u2019ll keep reading this series for the time being. At the very least, I\u2019m curious how Alvin will grow from here, as he\u2019s developed into a strong character who can basically do anything he wants.<\/p>\n

A magical take on addressing the racism of America\u2019s past, I give Prentice Alvin<\/em> 4.5 stars out of 5.<\/p>\n

\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" \"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" \"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" \"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" 1\/2<\/strong><\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Prentice Alvin Year: 1989 Author: Orson Scott Card Length: 830 minutes \/ 13.83 hours As I\u2019ve been reading through the Tales of Alvin Maker series, I have found it interesting to see what big societal issues have been covered so far. While Seventh Son tackled religion and Red Prophet delved into politics and war, Prentice Alvin bit off a big chunk of racism […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,54],"tags":[892,1690,55,789,903,554,1952,8,28,1912,1913],"class_list":["post-1631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-4-5-stars","category-book","tag-892","tag-alternate-history","tag-book","tag-fantasy","tag-historical-fiction","tag-orson-scott-card","tag-prentice-alvin","tag-review","tag-series","tag-seventh-son","tag-tales-of-alvin-maker"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1631","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1631"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1631\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1635,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1631\/revisions\/1635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}