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1Wosret
Hi all!
I read this library book in the 80s. It may have been in the young adult section. I remember the title being something like "Iron" but that never turns up anything when I search for it.
In it, the main character is the crown prince of a country on another planet. This planet is a penal colony for Earth, and each country is trying to trade enough iron with Earth to build a space ship to get back. The main character is from a country where some people start growing extra limbs or organs. Those people are then penned like cattle and harvested like fruit trees, and those parts are traded with Earth for metal. When he discovers that he's started to grow breasts (due to this affliction) he tries to cut them off, but it hurts too much.
Soon after, there is a bloody coup. He and his father barely escape with their lives, but his younger brother's throat is cut from ear to ear. The king and prince flee to a neighbouring country in the forest, where they've heard strange stories of the people in that country. They have heard that those people can manipulate time. They can hunt deer by stopping time, and just walk up to the deer and kill it. The people of that country find the king and prince but don't trust them. The prince leaves and goes to the next country and his father stays behind.
I'm pretty sure this country was named Bird. By this time, he's grown full breasts, and so he disguises himself as a woman. He's waylaid by ruffians, who tie him to a post and try to rape or humiliate him. He manages to escape again, and goes to the next country.
I'm not quite sure of the sequence of events here, but the prince ends up as a prisoner in a country that uses a mysterious smell as their asset to trade with Earth. His bonds are very sharp and made of metal, but because of his condition, he knows that his fingers will grow back when he squeezes his hands out of the bonds, cutting them off. There's a woman (the leader of the people of this country?) who is taunting him and is the one holding him prisoner. He gets a near-fatal stomach wound after escaping and his guts fall out, trailing behind him. He has to stuff them back in.
He moves on to another country where he finds work as a shepherd for a woman that he eventually falls in love with. He has a way with the animals due to his time in the forest right after he fled his native land. He sleeps right in front of the door but doesn't get cold from the draft coming in underneath it. People think he's strange but he's far enough from home and everything he's left behind that he's content, for a time, to live as a simple shepherd.
At some point a creature that looks like his dead brother finds him. He's got extra heads and arms and legs because he also has the condition of his country. The younger prince died, but this clone was created from extra parts. The older prince learned on his travels how to hide the extra parts through an illusion, so he helps him (and himself?) with this knowledge.
There is some tragedy or conflict that drives the prince over the edge (maybe it was that his woman was murdered?). He is so angry that he wants to kill everyone. He learned somewhere on his travels how to swim through the land as though it were water (and walk on the water by stopping time), so he goes down under the land and pulls an island into the sea by manipulating the rocks and molten earth underneath it. Another one of his gifts that he's learned during his travels is that he will hear forever the voice of those he has killed, so he now has a chorus in his head, and they weren't all the guilty ones who wronged him. His anger abates.
There are pirates and a sea voyage at some point. He goes to the desert and learns how to cure himself and his clone-brother, so that they are actually whole rather than merely the illusion of whole. At the end he cuts off communication with Earth, as his travels have shown him that the people of this planet are killing themselves and each other for a promise that will never come true. Earth would never take them back.
I seriously don't know how long this book was! It seems pretty epic, but I did read Lord of the Rings when I was that age, so it's entirely possible that I read other long, epic novels.
What the heck book did I read? Thanks! :)
I read this library book in the 80s. It may have been in the young adult section. I remember the title being something like "Iron" but that never turns up anything when I search for it.
In it, the main character is the crown prince of a country on another planet. This planet is a penal colony for Earth, and each country is trying to trade enough iron with Earth to build a space ship to get back. The main character is from a country where some people start growing extra limbs or organs. Those people are then penned like cattle and harvested like fruit trees, and those parts are traded with Earth for metal. When he discovers that he's started to grow breasts (due to this affliction) he tries to cut them off, but it hurts too much.
Soon after, there is a bloody coup. He and his father barely escape with their lives, but his younger brother's throat is cut from ear to ear. The king and prince flee to a neighbouring country in the forest, where they've heard strange stories of the people in that country. They have heard that those people can manipulate time. They can hunt deer by stopping time, and just walk up to the deer and kill it. The people of that country find the king and prince but don't trust them. The prince leaves and goes to the next country and his father stays behind.
I'm pretty sure this country was named Bird. By this time, he's grown full breasts, and so he disguises himself as a woman. He's waylaid by ruffians, who tie him to a post and try to rape or humiliate him. He manages to escape again, and goes to the next country.
I'm not quite sure of the sequence of events here, but the prince ends up as a prisoner in a country that uses a mysterious smell as their asset to trade with Earth. His bonds are very sharp and made of metal, but because of his condition, he knows that his fingers will grow back when he squeezes his hands out of the bonds, cutting them off. There's a woman (the leader of the people of this country?) who is taunting him and is the one holding him prisoner. He gets a near-fatal stomach wound after escaping and his guts fall out, trailing behind him. He has to stuff them back in.
He moves on to another country where he finds work as a shepherd for a woman that he eventually falls in love with. He has a way with the animals due to his time in the forest right after he fled his native land. He sleeps right in front of the door but doesn't get cold from the draft coming in underneath it. People think he's strange but he's far enough from home and everything he's left behind that he's content, for a time, to live as a simple shepherd.
At some point a creature that looks like his dead brother finds him. He's got extra heads and arms and legs because he also has the condition of his country. The younger prince died, but this clone was created from extra parts. The older prince learned on his travels how to hide the extra parts through an illusion, so he helps him (and himself?) with this knowledge.
There is some tragedy or conflict that drives the prince over the edge (maybe it was that his woman was murdered?). He is so angry that he wants to kill everyone. He learned somewhere on his travels how to swim through the land as though it were water (and walk on the water by stopping time), so he goes down under the land and pulls an island into the sea by manipulating the rocks and molten earth underneath it. Another one of his gifts that he's learned during his travels is that he will hear forever the voice of those he has killed, so he now has a chorus in his head, and they weren't all the guilty ones who wronged him. His anger abates.
There are pirates and a sea voyage at some point. He goes to the desert and learns how to cure himself and his clone-brother, so that they are actually whole rather than merely the illusion of whole. At the end he cuts off communication with Earth, as his travels have shown him that the people of this planet are killing themselves and each other for a promise that will never come true. Earth would never take them back.
I seriously don't know how long this book was! It seems pretty epic, but I did read Lord of the Rings when I was that age, so it's entirely possible that I read other long, epic novels.
What the heck book did I read? Thanks! :)
2MyriadBooks
Wow. That description is epic. I can't wait for somebody to pin a title on this sucker.
3Wosret
I crossposted to the Booksleuth page on Abebooks and it's A Planet Called Treason by Orson Scott Card!! YAY!!! :D
4MyriadBooks
Awesome! Thanks for following up!
5RowanTribe
Oh darnit! I knew this one too! Just a few days too late. A very very good book.
Interesting fact - the original story was called A Planet Called Treason, and if you find a copy of that, it's a very different story. Card went back as a more mature author and fixed it up and lengthened it into (in my opinion) a much better overall story which he renamed simply Treason.
ETA - the really interesting thing is, even with all that going on (and some really interesting philosophy and theology and existential questioning thrown in) the book itself isn't very long - only 275 pages in the extended version, and I think much closer to 200, maybe even less, in the original.
If you have time/inclination, check out both versions - I think it's really interesting to see how Card changed things!
Interesting fact - the original story was called A Planet Called Treason, and if you find a copy of that, it's a very different story. Card went back as a more mature author and fixed it up and lengthened it into (in my opinion) a much better overall story which he renamed simply Treason.
ETA - the really interesting thing is, even with all that going on (and some really interesting philosophy and theology and existential questioning thrown in) the book itself isn't very long - only 275 pages in the extended version, and I think much closer to 200, maybe even less, in the original.
If you have time/inclination, check out both versions - I think it's really interesting to see how Card changed things!
6Wosret
Yeah, there's a wikipedia page on it. :D I'm not sure which version I read. Maybe the more recent one, since I remember the title being a single word. It's so long ago that it probably doesn't matter anyway.
Unfortunately the library only has the more recent one as a borrowable book. The original is available in the reference section, but I can't just hang out at the library to read it. Ah well.
I really hope that rereading it will be as good as I'm hoping, since it's stayed with me in such detail all these years.
(Edited to say that I think it was the Treason version that I read. Reading it now! Yay!)
Unfortunately the library only has the more recent one as a borrowable book. The original is available in the reference section, but I can't just hang out at the library to read it. Ah well.
I really hope that rereading it will be as good as I'm hoping, since it's stayed with me in such detail all these years.
(Edited to say that I think it was the Treason version that I read. Reading it now! Yay!)
