I lose sight sometimes that sword and quest fantasy is not all there is to this genre. In an effort to broaden my knowledge of the genre I am writing in, and picked up this novel because Card was one of the names I'd noticed took up a lot of space in the fantasy section when I was a bookseller, and it cost me 50 cents at the library book sale. It was money well-spent and a refreshing change. Set in an alternate post-colonial America where magic is more commonplace, the center of this novel and series is a young boy who is the seventh son of the seventh son. Alvin Miller, Jr., is an endearing and interesting hero, and the world Card creates through a mixing and matching of history for the previous 300 years is creative and crafted authentically.

Poet William Blake becomes our guide as Taleswapper. Benjamin Franklin was a reputed Maker and wizard though he denied it, and George Washington was beheaded. Reformed religion is battling the magic, and the throne of England was never restored. A Lord Protector still rules, but the Stewart dynasty is still alive and well in America's South.

The view of God and organized religion is pretty bleak, and ironically science and Reformed religion are yoked in the Presbyterian minister who is the unwitting pawn of the Unmaker, the deluded man thinking he is being visited by an angel. This is my only quibble with the novel. It seems too easy a black-and-white scapegoat, yet I can't deny that historically a host of narrow-minded cruelties and injustices, both personal and global, give credence to this perspective. Those who follow Christ, or claim to, can't seem to believe God is big enough to take care of his own dignity, and that we have to take care of things for him in our own way whether he likes it or not. He'll see we're right and be grateful in the end. I am not as clear about whether God is also in the dock with the zealots, but I am curious to read the rest of the series. So far I enjoy Alvin Jr.'s company.