The Alchemy of Stone

By: Ekaterina Sedia

Narrated by: Eileen Stevens

Mattie, an intelligent automaton skilled in the use of alchemy, finds herself caught in the middle of a conflict between gargoyles, the Mechanics, and the Alchemists. With the old order quickly giving way to the new, Mattie discovers powerful and dangerous secrets - secrets that can completely alter the balance of power in the city of Ayona. This doesn't sit well with Loharri, the Mechanic who created Mattie and still has the key to her heart - literally.

©2008 Ekaterina Sedia (P)2010 Audible, Inc.

Critic reviews

"Sedia's evocative third novel, a steampunk fable about the price of industrial development, follows Mattie, an emancipated automaton, as her home city is rent by conflict between alchemists and the mechanics whose clanking, steaming inventions are changing society....Sedia's exquisitely bleak vision deliberately skewers familiar ideas from know-it-all computers to talking statues desperate for souls, leaving readers to reach their own conclusions about the proper balance of tradition and progress and what it means to be alive." ( Publishers Weekly)

Dark gothic steampunk fantasy? Yes please

A very good surprise this one.
Picked it up from the plus catalogue, and it's worth it.
A very compeling story about possessiveness, relationships, humanity at it's best and at it's worst, racism, the cost of progress and conflict.
I really liked the story and how the world keeps going into darker and darker places. I liked the characters and specially Maddie, the clockwork protagonist.
Not super fan of the voices for the gargoyles, it's rough to listen to even if they seem appropiate.

A listen worth trying in my opinion.

what an ending!

It was a great story, but I don't really like sad endings. It is a great story could go into a movie and I wouldn't say that about many of them.

💖

I loved this so much more than I expected to! Please read this! And the voice actor is really good!

just not quite there

This book seemed to have lots of things going for it. Interesting premise, variety of different and intriguing characters, individual problems and civil unrest, a mix of fantasy and steam punk. But for some reason I still didn't really like it. I still have trouble pinpointing exactly what I didn't like.

Maybe it was that the political background wasn't really explained that fully, and so it's hard to get emotionally invested in the conflict which drives the main plot. Lots of books I find get too wrapped up in explaining the intricate political and social system that they've created, so much so that it swamps the plot. But this one could definitely have had more context.

Or, maybe it's that while almost all the characters have interesting back-stories they just don't seem to interact naturally. The conversations and interactions seem forced and stilted. Characters do things for reasons I don't understand. So, between not caring about the civil war and not understanding why the characters do what they do, it's sort of hard to care about what happens at all.

Story was OK

It might have just been that I’m not used to reading steam punk books. But honestly I could see why this was a free book I had to speed up the stories several times just to get through it.