Charlinder's Walk [Kindle Edition]

Alyson Miers (Author)

Book Description

In 2012, the Plague brought about the end of the world. In 2130, Charlinder wants to know why when his village begins to fight over the Plague’s origin. Was it a natural event, or did God punish humanity for its sins?

Unwilling to wait for matters to get any worse, and never having been more than ten miles from home, he decides to walk across three continents to find the site of the Plague’s origin and bring the true story home.

In the two and a half years it takes him to get there, he learns how shocking his village’s culture seems to outsiders while the settlements along the way force him to grapple with questions of family, religion, education, sexuality, hierarchy and interdependence. He survives thousands of miles of language barriers, hunger and disaster before he meets Gentiola.

Nothing could have prepared him for the tale of madness, ecology and fanaticism that he learns from her. His place in the world is a question he will ask for the first time.

Editorial Reviews

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.

Product Details

• File Size: 649 KB
• Print Length: 494 pages
• Page Numbers Source ISBN: 1466443839
• Publisher: Alyson Miers (October 15, 2011)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B005W71H0S
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• X-Ray: Not Enabled
• Lending: Enabled
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #765,401 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Loved every minute of my journey with Charlinder's Walk! May 29, 2012

By Pooja. S

Format:Paperback

I might sound a bit gushy and all over the place while saying this but I LOVED THIS BOOK! I spent the whole of this week reading Charlinder's Walk in bits and pieces till I reached the heart of the journey and was glued, as aware that I was getting closer to the "origin", the original purpose of the journey as Charlinder and I wouldn't have preferred to read it any other way.

THE STORY

Charlinder's Walk takes place in the year 2130. The world as we know it was destroyed in 2012 due to an airborne-disease with a frightfully long incubation period. The Plague spread from Italy to the rest of the world leaving few survivors who were scattered all over. They were in many ways taken back a few centuries with the absence of technology and with stronger ties to the land.

The brewing conflict between the Faithfuls and everyone else about the origins of the Plague and how life should go on in the Paleolan community leads Charlinder, a teacher who hasn't even ventured ten miles away from home, to decide to embark on a journey all the way to Italy to find out the actual origin of the Plague. Maybe that, he decides, will bring an end to all the unrest...

Charlinder WALKS across three continents... that's right, walks!... over the span of three years with only a sheep, Queen Anne's Lace or Lacey for short as his companion. He does this by stopping by various villages at various points of time and meeting people from various cultures and communities with different beliefs about race, gender, sex and the Plague itself. By the time he quite literally finds the origin of it all, he wonders if the source of the problem was all he came for and if that alone is enough....

THE JOURNEY

I loved everything about Alyson Miers' Charlinder's Walk because of the Walk itself. Charlinder's journey wasn't easy and I felt like I was there with him as he crossed several barriers, encountered several hardships, was confronted with so many different types of living and attitudes towards gender, division of labour, sex and life and that, in many ways, helped him grow and fully live up to his potential. I loved Charlinder, with his fondness for knitting, weaving and teaching and how he was bright, unusual and yet completely true to himself. I enjoyed getting to know him as he grew out of his old shoes, ragged from his travel, into newer and bigger ones.

What the journey was like for me...

It started out relatively slow as Charlinder encountered a variety of communities and societies as he walked across North America. A lot of the communities were not avuncular like the Paleolan settlement and the Hyatt's dictatorship-like regime was a startling depiction of how even though post-Plague, the whole haves vs. haves-not classification had been practically wiped out, it was only a matter of time before it could reemerge.

I could appreciate Charlinder's bond with Lacey, his sheep and only constant source of companionship, especially after Charlinder ventured into Eurasia where there was the language-barrier between him and the locals that presented a whole new challenge! I adored Lacey and grew extremely attached to her. There were so many light hearted moments that had me giggling, especially one with Charlinder, Lacey and a wolf!!

I could feel Charlinder's feelings of isolation and distance from everything around him as the winter approached. Halfway through the book, I was filled with a sense of heartache and loss but really, that's where it all began. By the time Charlinder reached Italy, I could feel his confusion and wonder about what he'd actually came for and the actual implications of the origin of the Plague.

It was an amazing journey, especially the journey back to North America when I could feel the growth in him and how his experiences had caused him to question his role in the world rather than just the state of the world! It was a teary, difficult and realistically long journey and I loved the insights, details and richness of it!

I started reading Charlinder's Walk at a photocopy shop, read a little on the bus on my way back from my summer internship and most of it at home on particularly sunny days. This book has traveled places and I loved every minute of my journey with it! Charlinder's Walk was an extremely long read for me which made me appreciate the length and breadth of Charlinder's walk even more. With a pleasant writing style, an engaging and diverse bunch of characters and the exploration of Charlinder's inner struggle alongside the exploration of much broader themes, this is a book that will stay with me for a long time.

FINAL THOUGHTS

This is a coming-of-age post-apocalyptic novel that will make you think and envision a world that is strangely reminiscent of the world we live in. I feel Charlinder's Walk is definitely not for anyone looking for a quick read. If you are, you might be a little put off with this book because it is not exactly fast-paced. But spending time with this book is a rewarding and enthralling experience! Read more ›

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars 7 out of 10 stars May 27, 2012

By Stephanie

Format:Paperback

Charlinder's Walk by Alison Miers
Release Date: October 16th, 2011
Publisher: CreateSpace
Page Count: 484
Source: Novel Publicity for review, as part of the Charlinder's Walk book tour

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.

What Stephanie Thinks: For me, this book is full of contradictions because it encompasses the most complex and diverse of political issues -- the universal ones that apply to both our world, and to the world of Charlinder that Miers carefully illustrates -- and yet is so grossly simple at the same time. The story itself overflows with ideas, a few of which I'll touch upon (but all of which, I won't have nearly enough space for!...) but I still get a sense that there are areas that are highly unrealistic, perhaps too idealistic and too 'best-case scenario', to really constitute for a heavy and considerable dystopian novel.

A self-proclaimed coming-of-age book, Charlinder's Walk is first and foremost an adventure. It embarks on Charlinder's aspiring journey of discovery, but not before introducing the time -- post-apocalypse (referred to as post-Plague); place -- Paleola, a small village east of the Appalachians; destination -- Italy, westward; and goal -- to find the origins and secrets of the disease that created Charlinder's world as he knows it. As readers, we know that Paleola has a community that is very different from our modern, industrialized environment. We discover later that other villages featured have commodities and values that are far, far stranger.

I'll admit the 'adventure' here isn't too exciting. Yes, Charlinder meets countless new faces and is exposed to countless little complications and countless unfamiliar cultures throughout his voyage, but they mostly pass as a blur. Things always work out a little too well for him: he always finds shelter right when he runs out of food/energy/motivation, he never really encounters serious barriers (lingual, topographical, physiological, and so on), and he goes on his trip and returns, finding just what he wanted, and without any twists or surprises, so there's nothing particularly memorable. How dull.

The history of the Plague is pretty surprising, I'll give credit where it's due, and Gentiola, the only enigma of a character, enchants me, but the so-called 'secret' seems to be minor in the book, compared to the 400-some remaining pages which describe everything else that occurs.

What I do find fascinating, however, is how Miers finds a way to shove a huge, all-bound sociology debate into her novel. Some topics broached include science and medicine, literacy, gender roles, domestic values, sexuality, religion, diplomacy, human ethics, and even a touch of magic, which laces in the fantastical elements to the plot. They're all subjects that make me think hard, and are what made this book most engaging.

Miers's style is pretty ordinary, but I appreciate how it is straightforward and chronological (no tricky play on perspective or memory, here!). My biggest complaint is that it is agonizingly wordy. Descriptive writing, I'm all for, but when the descriptions do near nothing to further the plot, it gets tedious. For a 484-page novel, this one is not so elaborate and masterful as I would expect; I feel it could have been written in half its page count without much being retracted.

Charlinder's Walk is a quickly paced, fairly easy read that makes me want to jump into arguments about all the global and political affairs it bestows. Kudos to Miers for being able to fit all that into one storyline and still make it relevant, and even more impressively, enjoyable. This isn't just a cheesy read; it actually has substance. However, in structure and in overall theme, it's quite shallow and nothing I will praise strongly. Some places are awfully awkward (for instance, one thing that irks me is how the characters all 'do sex' with each other when I've been taught to 'have' it) but that's nothing too big of a crime. Pick it up during the summer if you've plenty of free time and an open mind.

Stephanie Loves: "...there is no end to the ways that people are limited by societies hiding behind the safety of routine. It may help maintain stability, but tradition should never be used as a substitute for thinking for oneself. It is a support system for life ... not the other way around."

Radical Rating: 7 hearts- A few flaws here and there, but overall enjoyable. Read more ›

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars It was the end of the world as they knew it... but how did it really end? May 22, 2012

By CabinGoddess

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

This year, according to the Mayan Calendar, is the year that the world as we know it will end. I have friends who believe this, they maxed took out credit cards and have charged them up. They took the idea of a bucket list a bit far and have been going nuts making sure their bucket is empty before the end is here. Some have even quit their jobs. Insanity? Perhaps, but perhaps some truth to the world ending as we know it. Perhaps like the Tarot card, Death, it does not mean someone will die but it can mean some aspect associated with their life will die.

What if something happened? What if a plague sweeps over us and killing off more 99% of the population? What would happen to the survivors? When the charge is gone from their iPod's, the prepared food runs out and they forced to rebuild with the lack of survival skills and ability to milk a cow or plant a crop!

Charlinder's Walk is a story that asks a few of these questions. It explores sociological, religious, cultural and even genetic implications of just such a thing happening. Alison Mier's writing really wraps you up in the questions surrounding these what if's. The world in this alternative history of planet earth ended in 2012 and by 2030 the implications of this pandemic were beginning to come to a head in a small village called Paleola. The Faithful (equivalent to bible thumping non-Christlike Christians who have nothing better to do than force their beliefs down other's throats) are starting to stir and the large group of agnostics in the village are starting to feel the burn of their fire and brimstone.

Charlinder's village maintains a society where the brother's raise their sister's children.... Paternity is not an issue, though the village infirmary tracks it to maintain purity in the genetics, it has never been a focus of their internal society. Women are encouraged to go bed people from other villages and other families, it is a matter of having babies and making sure the gene pool has large chain of code to choose from. From a sociological perspective it is one of the most ideal societies that could have risen from the ashes of 2012. But most of the Paleolans have never been outside 10 miles away from the village. They spin their cloth, they churn their butter, the milk their ewes and eat soybeans with joy (that takes a LOT in my opinion).

One reason for the openness of the villagers are blessed with the journals of a first generation survivor who butted heads with the Faithful of 2012, who saw the logic in science. Those who know realized then necessity of learning the pre-technological modern world skills needed to live through the first winter and start rebuilding amid the ruins of the planet. These journals happen to birth of many of these questions helped raise the villager's teacher. Reading the book we get to have a peek at the society immediately post plague and are able to compare it to with life is like 118 years later.

So what happens when this young teacher starts to worry the Faithful will ignore not only the biological implications but also of cultural eruptions of hate within such a tight-knit family/village. That they will stir up hate and discontent that will split this loving and supportive community down the middle. The questions that the journals have built up in him for years and the question that the Faithful are pushing on everyone to believe that God punished us and brought about the plague. But as the author points out within the pages of Eileen's journal:

"There is no burden of proof on choosing God as an answer in the first place, no evidence required for defending Him as your position, and no way to rule Him out of the equation in the end. He is the quickest and easiest way to be right at the beginning, without carrying the risk of ever being proven wrong."

Wise words to remember when trying to look for the answers to questions no one answers too. Charlinder needs these answers not only for himself but for the continued harmony of the community. A sudden realization of the necessity of the answer to the questions becomes clear when seeing the anger from someone he may have some religious issues with, but who is still part of his family, his community. In this instance he makes a decision, to go find the answer to the plague. There are not boats, there are no planes, he cannot speak anything but American English but he has two legs and he can walk, and walk he does, all the way to Italy.

I am giving this book FIVE stars on the writing and complexity of a tale that flows so well and so beautifully. For the different voices that spoke to me and I could hear. For poetic beauty she wove throughout the book. From a personal rating, I am giving it THREE, not because it is not a good book, it is amazingly written. As stated, the story is well constructed. the cultural questions, religious questions and all the sociological implications are spot on. My reasons are exactly that, just like my religion. Many things rubbed me wrong, and it mainly was the religious thing, so you can ignore me and take a four star rating to the bank. (**see below for my explanation of why I have an issues.) SO overall this book gets FOUR stars, or moose tracks (trying out a new rating system!)

I recommend this read to anyone who wants a really good thought provoking read. I would recommend this for a book club read because I spent hours talking about this with my fiance. I would recommend this to my elder children to read and question. I would recommend this to people who have no hang-ups like me because it really is one heck of a book. I would not recommend this book to any of my rabid pagan friends. I would not let anyone young read it because the sex scenes are just to graphic. Necessary to the story for sure but much and to graphic for a young adult read. It is well worth the cost of either paper back or ebook. Fair warning however, this is not a weekend read. This is a book that makes you think all 400+ pages of it. The only thing I would add to the book is a book club guide because as stated above this is a great book club book. Hmm maybe I should write one!

I want to also give props to author on Charlinder's Alaska visit. Choosing the Yup'ik was a bold move. They traditionally are seal hunters and though they also hunt Walrus seals are their main traditional and most revered animal for the hunt are seals, which is their main festival. As an Alaskan I found this very interesting and well played out on Alyson's part. Just as with any society and culture on earth, they will have adapted also. Reality is the Yup'ik tribe is in the Bering Bay area so they were where they belonged, the walruses are down there too. These days there are walrus hunts, so I was pretty impressed. Most people call the Native Alaskan's Eskimos and move along. The Yup'ik are actually a Eskimo tribe!
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**Here are my religious hang ups if you are interested. Many reviewers have stated they liked how religion was not pushed into their faces, however I beg to differ, and I do not think this is on the author AT ALL. This is an implication and reality of today. Creationists have a thing called Intelligent Design. They are argue as many others in the past that scientists actually do believe in something, the religion of science. Religious faith is an emotional based response to belief and belief is fallible. Therefor science is not is and cannot be called a belief. I call bull. AGAIN this has nothing to do with the author! Science is based on empirical evidence, there is a burden of proof involved. I was raised to believe in evolution, by Christian parents who knew the cultural truths about Mary and Joseph's society where the only answer to living would be a virgin birth. I am a proud pagan woman who is an ordained Priestess, who has ministered and married many and who tries being as culturally aware as possible and even I can get sucked into this argument and was shocked, so AGAIN kudos to how well written this book is.

"Of course I understand your frustration with the Faithful," she responded, with eyes glowing, "but insisting that everyone follow your non-belief in God is still dogmatic."

This review is based on a free electronic copy provided by the author for the purpose of creating this review. The opinions expressed are mine alone. This is a Novel Publicity Tour review. Read more ›

More About the Author

Alyson is a Maryland-based author of literary fiction and whatever happens to strike her fancy. She aims to write books that people can argue about for hours over glasses of red wine. She is not above talking about herself in the third person.

Excerpts, setting and character bios about Alyson's debut novel, Charlinder's Walk, can be found here: http://www.redsresources.com/charlinder/index.html