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A Stranger in the Citadel

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A Stranger in the Citadel

By: Tobias S. Buckell
Narrated by: Janina Edwards
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About this listen

A tale of family bonds, royal power, and the truth that threatens it all, from World Fantasy Award-winner Tobias S. Buckell.

“You shall not suffer a librarian to live.”

Growing up in Ninetha, Lilith has known this law all her life. The city’s every need is provided for by a god-machine called the cornucopia, which can produce food, clothing, anything in response to a thought. The gods provided this bounty on one condition: that humanity give up reading and writing.

Then, a librarian, an actual seeker of forbidden written knowledge, walks through the gates of the citadel, his very presence unraveling the life Lilith has known. She learns her father, the Lord Musketeer himself, has been harboring a secret - one that turns Ninetha against Lilith’s family.

Forced to flee, forced to throw in her lot with the librarian, Lilith uncovers even greater secrets - about the lie her life has been, and about the very nature of their world.

©2021 Tobias S. Buckell (P)2021 Audible Originals, LLC. Epic Epic Fantasy Fantasy Fiction Science Fiction

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A good story set in a well worn trope. After some unspecified event, humanity has been banned from reading and lives a low tech existence with help from the very hitech cornucopia. Set hundreds of years later, the capture of a stranger is the catalyst for the protagonist to go a journey that will expand her world. Recommended.

Narration was good.

Harking back to the old days

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A pro-human cool-headed argument for literacy and critical thinking. When curiosity is a vice, and obedience to the gods (machines) the highest valour, it stands to reason that literacy is both a sin and a crime. Buckell's novel weaves a compelling tale with that premise; when she encounters a librarian and archivist, and then discovers her father keeps a book and values knowledge, Lilith's world falls apart. In this world where piety and good citizenship are one, where our world of art, science and popular literacy is a thing of the past, cities are separated by swathes of wasteland, and are each ruled according to their own city's sense of itself. Despotism takes over some, egalitan care others, but all have sacrificed critical thinking for comfort. A sobering look at a not unlikely nor impossible future.

Surprising Dystopia

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In a world where reading is forbidden, everyone sure used a lot of words. I found the teen protagonist so unlikeable that towards the end I lost interest in everything. The story was a patchwork of other stories, with muskets, future tech, ancient history, so many biblical references, and literature. And religion. So much religion.

Go away, Lilith

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