Ruins

De: Lily Brooks-Dalton

Narrado por: Carlotta Brentan

From the author of GMA Book Club Pick The Light Pirate, comes a powerful, deeply resonant novel about an ambitious archaeologist in pursuit of a rare artifact from an ancient civilization that would not only change her life but potentially society at large.

“Lily Brooks-Dalton's novels are rich literary feasts." —Geraldine Brooks, bestselling author of Horse

Professor Ember Agni is a rising star in archeology, trying to balance an unfulfilling career in academia and a crumbling marriage, all while pursuing her true passion: unearthing a lost empire that no one else believes existed. Just as she’s about to give up on the ambitious expedition she spent a decade trying to fund, a message arrives from overseas. A former student claims to have found something extraordinary—an artifact that hints at the forgotten world lying beneath history’s tidy surface.

With vindication finally within reach, Ember risks everything for the sake of discovery and undertakes an odyssey that will either make her name or ruin her. Driven by unwavering faith in her vision of the past, she challenges the limits of her nation, her colleagues, and herself in order to exhume the missing pieces of how humanity began. But as she journeys deep into an untouched wilderness, in dogged pursuit of a dead civilization, she collides with the wreckage of her own life.

On the brink of either discovery or destruction, Ember must choose who she wants to be, and to what kind of world she wants to belong.

Beautiful, imaginative, new perspective

First, thank you to a new podcast called Reader’s Forecast! I heard about this book there. And I’m so thankful I did.

I loved the characters and the layers of the story. I felt like an archeologist myself, slowly easing the dirt away to reveal something old and timeless. Something known and unknown. Something precious.

I hope there will be a sequel. This is my only complaint—I wasn’t ready for it to end. I loved the narrator too. Wonderful performance. I can’t wait to look up her other work. And I can’t wait to listen to this story again.

A study in complexity

Ember, the main character in Ruins, is complicated. Kind of like Odysseus is complicated, T.E. Lawrence is complicated, Bruce Wayne. (Yes, they're all male on purpose.) But unlike those characters, Ember isn't violent (though she sort of kind of considers it at one point). Ember is a circle trying to fit in a square hole, but she doesn't know it. She is an awkward human, as many of us are, and it leads her to make choices she knows she shouldn't make and yet. Ember's got a bit of Capt. Ahab in her. But instead of a whale, she's out to find proof of a hypothesis. She's trying to do "good", be "good" but. There's a macro micro element in the whole of the narrative. Ember is self-absorbed. The society she's excavating was self-absorbed and this led to its demise. I was a little worried about a quarter of the way in this was going to be a pedestrian affair, but I should've known better as I am a huge fan of LBD. I should've trusted. I should've known. And boy does the reveal upend when it comes (and keeps coming) and so subtly that I was sure I hadn't been listening close enough. The narrator, Carlotta Brentan, is amazing. There are so many subtle moments in the text that could blow by without notice but she illuminates them in her reading with care and the same degree of subtlety. Listen to it.