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Red Prophet by Orson Scott Card
Published by Tor Books
Reviewed by Leigh Kimmel
Red Prophet is the sequel to Seventh Son. Alvin Miller is now a young man and it is time for him to be apprenticed to learn a useful trade. Because of his strange talents in the forming of materials, his father decides to apprentice him to a smith in the town where he was born.
However, getting there is easier said than done. This is a time before easy transportation, where a man had to walk or ride through a wilderness full of full of dangere. Alvin and his brother Measure set off on the journey, only to be captured by hostile Reds who serve those who wish war between Red and White.
Just as they are resigning themselves to being tortured to death, they are rescued by the forces of Ta-Kumsaw (Tecumseh), chieftan of another Red tribe. He knows that warfare now will only destroy his people, and he takes young Alvin and Measure to live among his own people, to learn the way of the Shaw-Nee.
Card's alternate American frontier is not only a place where pioneer folk magic really works. It is also a world where the supposed mystical connection of the Red Man to the land is just as real. Ta-Kumsaw and his people live among the endless "green music" of the land, in harmony with plant and animal.
But all is not idyllic, for hatred and fear can still lead human beings to commit terrible atrocities. While Alvin and Measure learn the way of the Reds, the White Murderer Harrison is telling their family and neighbors that Ta-Kumsaw and his people have murdered them. Suddenly they must make a desperate run to prevent a massacre of the peaceful Reds at nearby Prophetstown.
The story continues in Prentice Alvin.
Click here to buy Red Prophet in paperback.
Click here to buy Red Prophet in abridged audio cassette.
Review posted July 20, 1999
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