Title: Charlinder’s Walk
Author: Alyson Miers
Published: October 5th, 2011
Format: ebook
Blurb: In 2012, the Plague ended the world as we know it. In 2130, Charlinder wants to know why.
The origin of the disease remains a mystery. Their ignorance of its provenance fuels a growing schism that threatens to destroy the peace that the survivors’ descendants have built. Unwilling to wait for matters to get any worse, he decides to travel to where the Plague first appeared and find out the truth-which means walking across three continents before returning home.
Charlinder has never been more than ten miles from home, has never heard anyone speak a foreign language, and he’s going it alone.
He survives thousands of miles of everything from near-starvation to near-madness before he meets Gentiola. By then he’s so exhausted that the story she offers to tell seems like little more than a diversion…until he hears it.
Nothing could have prepared him for what he learns from her, and no one ever told him: be careful what you wish for. The world is a much bigger place than Charlinder knew, and his place in it is a question he never asked before.
Opening Line: “In Charlinder’s opinion, there was no better place to be on a sunny afternoon in March than Spinner’s Sqaure. This meant he was regarded as the odd duck of the village.” Ok opening two sentences, but we’re immediately introduced to the protagonist (who has an awesome name) and we know he’s a bit quirky or at least considered odd by others.
What I Liked: This story is heavy and intense. It asks some really difficult questions particularly of religion while examining societal norms, challenging established gender roles and even family construction. I appreciate how fearlessly the author dived into this topics. It made for some interesting and thought provoking reading.
What I Didn’t Like: The story is almost sidelined by the didactic nature of the tale itself. There’s also no light relief. In a story this intense and challenging, I wanted there to be some reprieve and it never really came. There were lighter moments but overall, this book seemed more about the themes and less about the plot or characters.
My Rating:
I’m not a fan of stories with such strong religious and socio-political content. I found this book difficult to read, not because of bad writing but because of the subject material. The writing is actually very good, it’s the content I didn’t like although it did make me think. For that reason I’ll give this book 3/5 ink splats but would encourage readers to read this book and form their own opinion.
Wanna win a $50 gift card or an autographed copy of Charlinder’s Walk? Well,
there are two ways to enter…
- Leave a comment on my blog. One random commenter during this tour will win a
$50 gift card. For the full list of participating blogs, visit the official Charlinder’s Walk tour page. - Enter the Rafflecopter contest! I’ve posted the contest form below, or you can enter on the official Charlinder’s Walk tour page –either way works just as well.
About the author:
Alyson Miers was born into a family of compulsive readers and thought it would be fun to get on the other side of the words. She attended Salisbury University, where she majored in English Creative Writing for some reason, and minored in Gender Studies. In 2006, she did the only thing a 25-year-old with a B.A. in English can do to pay the rent: joined the Peace Corps. At her assignment of teaching English in Albania, she learned the joys of culture shock, language barriers and being the only foreigner on the street, and got Charlinder off the ground. She brought home a completed first draft in 2008 and, between doing a lot of other stuff such as writing two other books, she managed to ready it for publication in 2011. She regularly shoots her mouth off at her blog, The Monster’s Ink, when she isn’t writing fiction or holding down her day job. She lives in Maryland with her computer and a lot of yarn. Connect with Alyson on her website, blog, Facebook, Twitter or GoodReads.
