The Moon and the Sun - Vonda N. McIntyre

Written by Vonda N. McIntyre
Read by Anna Fields
Format: MP3
Unabridged

Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
Release date: June 10, 2008
Duration: 14:56:49

This breathtaking tale is part adventure story, part legend, and part Gothic novel.
By the fiftieth year of his reign, Louis XIV has made France the most powerful state in the Western world. Yet the Sun King’s appetite for glory knows no bounds. In a bold stroke, he sends his natural philosopher on an expedition to seek the source of immortality: a rare, perhaps mythical, sea monster.

When Father Yves de la Croix returns with the shrieking, gargoyle-faced creature, Marie-Josèphe looks forward to assisting her adored brother with his scientific study. Yet the creature’s gaze and exquisite singing foretell a different future. Soon Marie-Josèphe finds herself contemplating choices that will defy the institutions, which power her world—king, country, church, and even family. She must find the courage to follow her heart and her convictions—even at the cost of changing her life forever.

A sensitive investigation of the integrity in all of us, The Moon and the Sun is destined to become a visionary classic.

“Inspired by tales of ancient sea-monsters, McIntyre spins a marvelous alternative-history fable about greed and goodness, power and pathos set at the 17th century court of Louis XIV, France’s glittering Sun King. … McIntyre vividly re-creates a Versailles poised on the cusp between alchemy and modern science. Her imaginings enliven her history with wonder, but, as in the best fantasy, they serve less to dazzle by their inventiveness than to illuminate brilliantly real-world truths–here, humanity’s responses, base and noble, when confronting the unknown.” —Publishers Weekly