The Alchemy of Stone

De: Ekaterina Sedia

Narrado por: 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.

Reseñas de la Crítica

"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.

rich world barely skimmed

The steampunk fantasy world the author creates is truly interesting which is why i was disappointed with the lack of depth in which it was explored.
Alot of the mechanics of the world aren't fully justified and even when there were thin attempts to explain the way things are lot of the time i felt like the author was just saying 'because i said so, thats why'. it only bothered me because key points such as the political structure seemed totally arbitrary. and one of the characters even points out that this particular city is unusual, so it seems like it doesn't even conform to the rules of it's own world.
the story, too, didn't really seem to gel for me. it felt like disparate elements. and the ending felt very rushed and unsatisfying. the climax felt messy and arbitrary because i couldn't feel like the politics had any foundation in reason, so everyone's political motives seemed one dimensional and I just don't know why I should care about any if it, there wasn't enough investment.
the real reason I'm being so critical is because there were some really interesting concepts. I'm glad to have experienced this book, but more for the fact that now I have a colourful steampunkish magic world i can explore in my own imagination, rather than for the story itself.

It was detailed and heart hurting

I loved it mostly tho I’m sad about the ending and about the automata in general

Terrible narration

The story was good enough but I think I might have enjoyed it better if the narrator wouldn't have done such a terrible job with the gargoyles voices. It made me listen the book in 1.5 speed to finish it as quickly as possible.
The end is also not very satisfying.

very entertaining story

highly recommend very entertaining and creative plot. it is most certainly worth a listen

wonderful but *tough* (in a good way)

Great speculative fiction piece, very clockwork/steampunk-- including our heroine, who is literally clockwork.

tough because... well, I'm physically and intellectually disabled, and I see a lot of my struggles, and the struggles of others like me but which I don't personally face, reflected in the story. in addition to the SF veneer metaphors for prejudice, there's also literal garden variety racism and abuse of power of law enforcement and wrongful imprisonment based on such things. I normally binge stories, but I had to keep pausing to let myself out of the story to deal with these things that hit so close to home.

In the beginning I didn't like the slightly over-purple prose, but I got used to it after a bit-- and the author stopped using twenty words when "she shook her head 'no'" would do so much, lmao. what remained fit the character and the style of the story.