History Literature / TheTalesOfAlvinMaker

* MagicalSeventhSon: Both Alvin and Calvin are a seventh son of a seventh son.

* CoversAlwaysLie: The first edition cover of ''Seventh Son'' (seen above) depicts Taleswapper as a long-haired, bearded [[LordOfTheRings Gandalf-esque]] figure, even though he's explicitly described as bald in the books. And, y'know... he's a fictionalized version of [[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/00/William_Blake_by_Thomas_Phillips.jpg/220px-William_Blake_by_Thomas_Phillips.jpg this guy]].

* {{Kuudere}}: Peggy when she first appears in the second book.

* ItAmusedMe: Why did Calvin advise William Henry Harrison how to become president just to kill him when he did it? beacuse he could.

* HistoricalDomainCharacter: UsefulNotes/WilliamHenryHarrison, Creator/WilliamBlake, several [[UsefulNotes/TheAmericanRevolution Founding Fathers]], Daniel Webster, Daniel Boone, Aaron Burr, [[WarOf1812 Tecumseh]] (Ta-kumsaw), Tenskwatawa, and so many others.

Born into all this is Alvin Miller (later Alvin Smith, and eventually Alvin Maker), a [[MagicalSeventhSon seventh-son-of-a-seventh-son]] and {{Expy}} of Joseph Smith (founder of the Mormon Church), a young child with tremendous powers, destined to be a [[MessianicArchetype Maker]], the first one for almost [[{{Jesus}} two thousand years]]. Able to bend metal, heal cancer, and many other abilities, he desires to learn how to control his abilities and help the world, aided by Peggy Larner, a girl with the ability to see people's thoughts, past, and future. Their primary goal is to build the Crystal City, a mysterious city of Makers shown to Alvin in a vision.

* AuthorTract: It can seem like this, depending on how much you know about {{Orson Scott Card}}'s [[{{UsefulNotes/Mormonism}} Mormon]] faith, which the series' mythology heavily draws from. Some of the later books get a bit preachy, but if you don't know what to look for it's much easier to ignore and appreciate the tale for its own sake.

A series of Fantasy/Alternate History books written by the talented {{Creator/Orson Scott Card}}, set a little bit after the American Revolutionary War, in a world where supernatural powers are a fact of life. {{In Spite of a Nail}}, however, history hasn't really diverged that much. There is a still a United States of America growing and racism still grows up in the South. However, this USA is much smaller, since the lower half of the Eastern Seaboard is the Crown Colonies, the government in exile of the House of Stuart. Up north is New England, still a colony of a republican England where the Restoration never occurred, and utterly opposed to "witchery", even though supernatural powers are very much real in this world. Meanwhile, out West, a mountain-based rebel group led by [[UsefulNotes/ThomasJefferson Tom Jefferson]] fights to keep the independent state of Appalachee free from the Crown.

* CoversAlwaysLie: The first edition cover of ''Seventh Son'' (seen above) depicts [[TheObiWan Taleswapper]] as a long-haired, bearded [[LordOfTheRings Gandalf-esque]] figure, even though he's explicitly described as bald in the books. And, y'know... he's a fictionalized version of [[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/00/William_Blake_by_Thomas_Phillips.jpg/220px-William_Blake_by_Thomas_Phillips.jpg this guy]].

A series of Fantasy/Alternate History books written by the talented {{Creator/Orson Scott Card}}, set a little bit after the American Revolutionary War, in a world where supernatural powers are a fact of life. {{In Spite of a Nail}}, however, history hasn't really diverged that much. There is a still a United States of America growing and racism still grows up in the South. However, this USA is much smaller, since the lower half of the Eastern Seaboard is the Crown Colonies, the government in exile of the House of Stuart. Up north is New England, still a colony of a republican England where the Restoration never occurred, and utterly opposed to "witchery", even though supernatural powers are very much real in this world. Meanwhile, out West, a mountain-based rebel group led by [[ThomasJefferson Tom Jefferson]] fights to keep the independent state of Appalachee free from the Crown.

* SmallRoleBigImpact: Lolla-Wossiky in ''Seventh Son'', before he becomes an AscendedExtra in the next book. He only appears in the flesh in one scene, and doesn't even have any lines, but he gives Alvin a series of visions that proves integral to his growth as a Maker.

* BeethovenWasAnAlienSpy: Done more subtly than most examples, but definitely present. In this world, many prominent figures from our history apparently owe their success to supernatural "Knacks", but they're such a natural part of this world that no one finds this particularly noteworthy. Creator/WilliamBlake got his poetic vision from his prophetic abilities, NapoleonBonaparte rose to prominence as a commander because of his supernatural knack for making people obey him, and [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenskwatawa Tenskwatawa]] won the Shawnee's respect because he was a genuinely powerful prophet and Earth wizard.

** GeorgeWashington was a land-holding nobleman (called "Lord Potomac") who fought on the British side of an American War of Independence, where Benedict Arnold commanded the American side.

Notably, Orson Scott Card named his official website, [[http://www.hatrack.com "Hatrack River"]], after one of the key locations in the ''Alvin Maker'' series. The indie pop duo The Scene Aesthetic are also apparently big fans of the series, as they included a song titled "Alvin Maker's Greensong" on their 2007 self-titled album.

* AdaptationExpansion: The series, as a whole, is actually an expansion of [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prentice_Alvin_and_the_No-Good_Plow "Prentice Alvin and the No-Good Plow"]], a narrative poem that Card wrote when he was a grad student. The relatively brief poem only includes the story of Alvin ([[OnlyOneName just "Alvin" here]]) forging the golden plow, but the roots of the series' mythology (including an unnamed evil force that would develop into The Unmaker) are still there, and Verily Cooper makes a brief appearance.
** It can be read in its entirety [[https://www.sunstonemagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/sbi/articles/072-23-32.pdf here]].

* WeirdnessMagnet: Alvin tends towards this, drawing in people with strong knacks...and their personal issues with them.

* CoversAlwaysLie: The first edition cover of ''Seventh Son'' (seen above) depicts [[TheObiWan Taleswapper]] as a long-haired, bearded [[LordOfTheRings Gandalf-esque]] figure, even though he's explicitly described as bald in the books. And, y'know...he's a fictionalized version of [[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/00/William_Blake_by_Thomas_Phillips.jpg/220px-William_Blake_by_Thomas_Phillips.jpg this guy]].

* MasterOfAll: He can duplicate the specialized "knack" abilities of almost every other character of European descent in the series, and the generalist greensong powers of the Native Americans as well. A character {{Lampshade}}s this when a phrenological examination of his head reveals that all of his traits and talents are perfectly balanced.

* HotForTeacher: Amy Sump gets this way for Alvin. [[spoiler:Then she starts spreading rumors about them having sex...]]

Filled with historical figures and powerful magic, it's an entertaining and satisfying tale.

* BeethovenWasAnAlienSpy: Done subtler than most examples, but definitely present. In this world, many prominent figures from our history apparently owe their success to supernatural "Knacks", but they're such a natural part of this world that no one finds this particularly noteworthy. Creator/WilliamBlake got his poetic vision from his prophetic abilities, NapoleonBonaparte rose to prominence as a commander because of his supernatural knack for making people obey him, and [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenskwatawa Tenskwatawa]] won the Shawnee's respect because he was a genuinely powerful prophet and Earth wizard.