Narrated by Joel Leslie
Lee Welch’s Seducing the Sorcerer is a quirky, sweet and inventive fantasy that combines an opposites-attract, slow-burn romance between two men in their forties (yay for older protagonists!) with magic, mystery and political intrigue. I enjoyed the book when I read it last year and have been looking forward to experiencing it again in audio, especially with the always entertaining Joel Leslie at the microphone.
Forty-six-year-old Fenn Todd, a down on his luck itinerant labourer, finds a day’s work on a farm where he’s offered coin and a meal as payment. He’s about to get to work when a younger man – the farmer’s nephew – offers him a horse instead of the money, and even though Fenn suspects he’s being played, he can’t squash the hope he feels. A horse of his own, even if it’s one bound for the knacker’s yard, even if he only gets to take care of it for a short while… he agrees, in spite of his misgivings.
He later realises he should have taken more heed of his suspicions when he’s presented with an ugly, horse-shaped scarecrow made of a bundle of old sacks. Refusing to show his anger or humiliation, Fenn hoists the bundle onto his shoulders and leaves, with the sound of the farm lads’ laughter ringing in his ears. At least a bundle of old sacking will give him something softer than the ground to sleep on that night – but as he’s close to dropping off, starting to dream about how he’d have loved and cared for a real horse, he feels the ground moving beneath him. The sacking is growing, filling out and getting to its feet, an inelegant, gormless-looking, hoofless… horse.
When the creature won’t let Fenn leave it behind, he decides to try riding it, and is surprised to find that while it may not look like much, it handles like a dream. Then they take a fence, but instead of landing on the other side, the horse keeps going up into the air until… they’re flying. The horse doesn’t respond to any of Fenn’s commands, so all he can do is hang on and hope he doesn’t fall when at last, they begin to descend, landing in a rain-drenched courtyard with a looming tower on one side and a gatehouse complete with battlements and portcullis on the other. Nervous, Fenn tries to get the horse back up into the air, but it’s having none of it – then the door to the tower slams open to reveal a man wearing black robes and a tall hat, and holding a staff standing at the top of the steps. Fenn knows immediately this is Morgrim, the powerful and dangerous court sorcerer, a man reputed to be a heartless, ruthless schemer with plans to kidnap and marry the Queen and who is believed to have caused the never-ending drought that has plagued the land for the last two years.
Fenn is on his guard immediately. He has no idea what to expect – but it isn’t the offer of a meal and bed for the night. Morgrim is every bit as forbidding as his reputation suggests and there’s more than an edge of impatience and sarcasm to his words, but there’s no indication he intends to blast Fenn to oblivion – at least, not right now – and with no way of leaving, he warily accepts the offered hospitality.
Fenn is the single PoV character and undoubtedly the star of the show. He’s beautifully crafted, a man who has been through so much and yet has retained his humanity; he’s kind and gentle with a wonderfully dry, self-deprecating sense of humour, and his love for horses is described in a way that’s palpable, the longing he feels to be able to tend to just one more making it easy to understand why he’s prepared to risk being duped at the farm.
Morgrim is more of a shadowy figure, but it doesn’t take Fenn – or the listener – long to work out that the whole Big Bad thing he’s got going on is a cover, and that behind it is a decent, troubled and very lonely man who is struggling under the weight of a huge burden. He’s secretive and devious – for very good reason, we discover later – but he’s also charming and endearingly awkward at times, and after an initial wariness, the two men begin to develop a friendship of sorts as they try to work out why the horse brought Fenn to the tower.
The romance between this very odd couple is a delightful slow burn (mostly – see below) and I really appreciated the way the author shows Fenn caring for Morgrim in small ways which are so very much in character; he says he’s not romantic because he can’t write poetry or sing love songs, so instead he fixes things around the tower and gets Morgrim a kitten – things which mean a lot to Morgrim because he’s never had someone truly care for him before. But after all the sweetness there’s a jarring tonal shift when it comes to the sex scenes which comes across far more strongly in audio than it did in print. The fact that Morgrim would want someone to take over and tell him what to do isn’t unexpected – the D/s vibe isn’t what bothers me – it’s that it’s so full on right from the moment they start a sexual relationship, and it doesn’t feel organic to what’s gone before.
The audio also exposes the fact that the story is very narrative-heavy – there’s a LOT of description and internal monologue – and that that despite the prevelance of description, sometimes the prose wasn’t clear enough for me to be really able to get a mental picture of certain things and events, which I found frustrating. Writing issues often stand out to me more in audio, and the ones I’ve mentioned mean that Seducing the Sorcerer didn’t work as well for me this time around, despite the participation of one of my favourite narrators.
Joel Leslie is a hugely talented and skilled vocal actor and someone I know I can rely on to deliver an expressive, animated performance that will capture every facet of the author’s vision. In Fenn’s world-weary, wryly observant voice, he expertly conveys all the tension and drama in the story, his gruffly accented tones bringing the character and his innate goodness vividly to life. His interpretation of Morgrim is pitch-perfect, too, his tone positively dripping with sarcasm or urgency when called for, slowly unbending as he responds to Fenn’s gentleness and understanding to reveal the vulnerability beneath. The emotional content of the story is superbly realised – Fenn’s longing when he talks about his work as a groom, his devastation, his despair – all are right there in his voice, and the same is true of Morgrim; you can hear how tightly-wound he is and how he longs, just for a little while, to be able to set down his burden. There’s a small secondary cast, each role clearly differentiated by means of a variety of accent and timbre, and the single female character of Queen Aramella is very well done. The main criticism I can level at the performance is that the pacing is a bit on the slow side, which means the longer descriptive passages sometimes dragged a bit. Even taking my reservations into account, there’s a lot to enjoy about this unique story. The magical world the author has created permeates the tale – the worple horse is a wonderful invention – the political intrigue and adventure are nicely balanced by the intimacy and domesticity Fenn and Morgrim find together, and I really enjoyed the way these two lonely, burdened men find love, comfort and acceptance in each other. So even though Seducing the Sorcerer didn’t quite work as well for me in audio as it did in print, I’m still happy to recommend it.
Caz
Buy Seducing the Sorcerer by Lee Welch on Amazon
I agree with everything you said here. I compensated for the slower pace by upping the speed a bit, which helped. I admit, like you, it didn’t work quite as well on audio as print, which is surprising since I think Joel’s narration was excellent. Parts of the story are somber and gloomy, and I felt it much more on audio. I did like all the characters and I LOVED the worple horse! Like Salt Magic, Skin Magic (which I really enjoyed), the magic system is well done.
Yes, it’s strange – you’d think it would be easier to spot inconsistenceis in print, but for me, they’re usually more glaring in audio – possibly because my eyes sometimes skip or miss things that my ears don’t or can’t!