The Gold-Son
By: Carrie Anne Noble / Narrated By: Gerard Doyle
Length: 8 hrs and 42 mins
I saw Carrie Anne Noble, and I got this puppy posthaste!
Yup, I know I did NOT like The Mermaid’s Sister, but I did so LOVE Gretchen and the Bear, and I do truly believe that Ms. Noble writes well (Just the plot in the former did NOT appeal to me, but OH, the latter! WOW!), so I saw The Gold-Son, and I snatched it up, knowing that if it wasn’t good, exactly, it’d at LEAST be superbly written. Plus, with Ms. Noble? The woman spins magical yarns that push the boundaries of genres.
This time, it’s Leprechauns, and the story opens with Tommin, a young man who’s ALWAYS stealing SOMEthing, so much so that his beloved grandma worriedly, tho’ lovingly, calls him “Magpie”.
So from the beginning I kinda sorta didn’t like him, cuz his need to take from others was NOT appealing to me. But then the story goes into his role as a shoemaker apprentice, and making shoes? Dang! He has a unique talent, plus he’s fond, quite fond of the little old man who’s given him a chance.
All is going tra la la until a short stocky man, Lorcan Reilly, enters the shop with his “niece”, Eve, ostensibly wanting shoes, but really coming to claim his gold-son. So thaaaaaat’s why Tommin can’t help himself: He’s kinda sorta been tainted by Leprechaun!
Lorcan snatches him away to the land of Leprechauns, and he’s quite the abusive brute. Just ask Eve, who has pretty much no choice but to go along with Lorcan’s plans to gather all his gold-sons so that he might wrest control and take over as Leader of the Leprechauns. Noble has Lorcan as quite the fiend, and this part, down with the Leprechauns where the gold-sons are forced to steal (They rather want to anyway) and study Leprechaun lore until they’re ready to go through three rituals and become full-fledged Leprechauns themselves.
All this is well and good until Tommin and fellow-sufferer, Chopper, buy into Eve’s plans to escape. This is all thwarted when the Leprechauns are attacked and Eve and Chopper are killed.
Okay, all that was fine and quite rousing, but then…
Tommin falls into a sleep that has him conked out over a hundred years, waking up depressed and veritably despondent. Life in modern times makes being a Leprechaun a bit of a twitchy affair what with credit cards instead of gold being used, but a woeful Tommin, missing Eve terribly, goes along, dejected but existing in this new world.
Then we find out that not only is Eve NOT dead, but she’s been keeping an eye out for Tommin all these years as danged if she can help it, but she loves him as well. Eve wangles a job in the mall at a beauty kiosk where she uses Glamour to hide who she is; and Tommin uses Charm to sell stuff to old ladies. Tommin finds himself falling for “Penelope” as she calls herself, and I can go on and on unspooling it all, but I shan’t. I’ll let you find out for yourself how it all goes after that.
And you WILL want to find out, cuz this is really a good Listen, esPECially if you come to this for Eve’s story/side of things. I found her to be a somewhat more engaging character as she’s a girl making swift decisions, taking action. Cuz you see, the first part of the book? Tommin grows on you. But the second part? Oh gosh, he kinda bemoans his fate a lot and usually gives in to feelings of hopelessness and despair, letting EVERYONE make him do this that the other. It kinda gets annoying. Still, all in all, I was engaged with the story.
And Gerard Doyle! What a fine narrator he is! Seriously, ever hear an Irishman fearlessly throw out the voice for a beefed-up Black woman, one who has the best intentions if not the more necessary skills needed to ferret out Leprechauns for trial? AWEsome! That and he’s going TOTally to the “Irish as terrifically blarney-laden actors” stereotype with delivering some incredibly lyrical writing. Ahhhh, yessss: Pure poetry ‘twas…!
Have to admit that this doesn’t top the sweet Gretchen and the Bear, but at least I didn’t loathe it or find myself exasperated most of the time (Just a weeeee bit when I wanted to pop Tommin on the head to: Just Do Something Already!). A charming listen, plus?
I get to use the word Glamour in two reviews this week! How cool is that?!?
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