Wheel of the Infinite

By: Martha Wells

Narrated by: Lisa Reneé Pitts

Every year in the great Temple City of Duvalpore, the image of the Wheel of the Infinite must be painstakingly remade to ensure another year of peace and harmony for the Celestial Empire. Every hundred years the sacred rite takes on added significance. For it is then that the very fabric of the world must be rewoven. Linked by the mystic energies of the Infinite, the Wheel and world are one. Should the holy image be marred, the world will suffer a similar injury. But a black storm is spreading across the Wheel. Every night the Voices of the Ancestors - the Wheel's constructors and caretakers - brush the darkness away and repair the damage with brightly colored sands and potent magic. Each morning the storm reappears, bigger and darker than before, unraveling the beautiful and orderly patterns. With chaos in the wind, a woman with a shadowy past has returned to Duvalpore.

A murderer and traitor - an exile disgraced, hated, and feared, and haunted by her own guilty conscience - Maskelle has been summoned back to help put the world right. Once she was the most revered of the Voices, until cursed by her own actions. Now, in the company of Rian - a skilled and dangerously alluring swordsman - she must confront dread enemies old and new and a cold, stalking malevolence unlike any she has ever encountered.

©2000 Martha Wells (P)2013 Tantor

Critic reviews

"Superior fantasy work from one of the best in the field." (Kirkus Starred Review)

Very vivid world building

The story is great and very involving. The narration took a little getting used to, and at times the story seemed to stall a bit and then recover the thread.

A lot of fun

This story breaks some of the norms of fantasy. It adopts some tropes from private detective noir. It’s a fun listen, moved quickly. Readers who know Martha Wells murder bot stories might miss the sci fi setting but they will recognize the story teller.

Good Story, poor narration

What did you love best about Wheel of the Infinite?

The world was creative and the characters distinctive

What did you like about the performance? What did you dislike?

I don't usually pay much attention to the narration when it works. This narrator had the accent of the American south. Completely at odds with an exotic location. In addition, she mispronounced words. I cringed a lot listening to her.

Any additional comments?

Martha Wells creates interesting worlds and characters. She needs a different narrator for this one.

it's not bad...

The story isn't bad at all. It takes a while to get rolling but is enjoyable. I personally couldn't get past the narrator. Her speech pattern is too distracting to me. Let me try that in her words.....Her Speech....Pattern....Is Too................Distracting.....To Me.

It's like if Christopher Walken and Captain Kirk had a love child.

wonderful

I loved the story and narrator. I noticed some criticism of the narrator, which is nonsense. She does speak more slowly and deliberately than my preference but sped up to 1.10 fixed that without distortion. I highly recommend the book.

Intricate world building, great reader!

The plotting is slow to get going. The world is wonderful and a fascinating and the primary character is very well developed. Secondary character development is so-so. The reader is very good.

Good book, awful narration.

I enjoyed the book— enough that I think I’m going to get the text version— but the narration was just awful. Pitts’s reading was full of awkward pauses, inappropriate uptalk, and misplaced emphasis that actually obscured the meaning of the sentences. I found myself having to mentally “transcribe” back into text to make sense of some passages. And she gave a couple of important characters comical voices, which was entirely out of keeping with the tone of the story and the characters’ role in it.

I’d love to see this one re-recorded by Robin Miles, who’s read some of Jemisin’s work. Till then, I recommend you buy the text and get a friend to read it to you.

Strong Characters, Great Narration

I love Martha Wells' world building. She peoples her lands with complex societies and reveals the details about those societies through the experience of individuals, so that there is always more showing than telling. She's not afraid to pair up unlikely romantic partners, explore all kinds of alternative role assignments, and allow for tenderness and toughness to coexist within any character of any gender.
This is a good story, thoroughly engaging, well told by a great narrator.

imagination

great read and listen. was surprised several times and it was intriguing in the handling of cultural beliefs

Fantastic story, terrible narration

After reading the Murderbot series I was excited to get into some more of Martha Wells work. I really enjoyed the world building and story itself, I found it refreshing for the main character of a fantasy book to be older than twenty five. I could not stand this narrator and that made it hard to get through the book. Her voice is pleasant but her reading style is stiff and stilted with strange pauses. The voices she chose for various character were also at odds with my impression of how the author described them. Most of the dry humor failed to come through because of the way it was read. I would have been better off reading this one in print.