Count Karlstein

Philip Pullman

ISBN 10: 0307286002 / ISBN 13: 9780307286000

Published by Listening Library, UNITED STATES, 2006

About this Item

5 Audio CD set in the clamshell case published by Listening Library withdrawn from the library collection. Some shelf wear to the box. Library sticker and stamp to the case and the CDs. Each audio cd is in an individual slot, protected, clear sounding and polished. Enjoy this Audio CD performance! Seller Inventory # Clean0208120240

Bibliographic Details

Title: Count Karlstein

Publisher: Listening Library, UNITED STATES

Publication Date: 2006

Binding: Audio Book (CD)

Condition: Good

About this title

Synopsis:

Who would dare venture outdoors on All Souls' Eve knowing that Zamiel the Demon Huntsman is on the prowl? But evil Count Karlstein has struck a bargain with Zamiel - and his two young nieces Charlotte and Lucy stand to lose out in the pact. What can the girls do to escape their fate?

Brilliantly informed by a variety of classic, and not so classic, sources, this tale gallops along at high speed and is a highly visual and very unusual book.

Review:

"I might have occupied my mind usefully with Improving Thoughts, but the only improvement I could imagine then was a pair of wings, to enable me to fly to freedom. And, of course, a Head for Heights. I cleaned the dust from the window and peered out hopefully, but there was nothing but a Horrid Precipice, with jagged crags several thousands of feet below." Such are the woes of young Charlotte, locked in a tower room of her uncle's gloomy Castle Karlstein in 19th-century Switzerland. Escaping this predicament seems the least of her worries: in a solemn blood pact, her evil uncle, Count Karlstein, has promised to sacrifice his two orphaned nieces, Lucy and Charlotte, to Zamiel the Demon Huntsman--on midnight of All Souls' Eve--in return for his current riches.

First, however, the heartless Count and his "lip-licking, moist-handed, creeping, smarming" secretary, Herr Arturo Snivelwurst, will have to catch Lucy, too--and it is no small task with the headstrong, 14-year-old Hildi Kelmar; her 18-year-old, handsome-in-a-scowling-sort- of-way brother, Peter; and the intrepid English teacher Miss Augusta Davenport on the girls' side. As Miss Davenport herself points out, "an English gentlewoman can rise above any circumstances, given intelligence and a loaded pistol." The events in this delightful gothic farce unfold quickly in a variety of narrative voices, artfully building in suspense to a powerful, terrifying, deeply satisfying stand-off between the Count and the Demon Huntsman of Impenetrable Darkness himself. Subplots and loose ends are gracefully, happily, justly tied up in the light of day, finally allowing readers to exhale.

British novelist Philip Pullman, masterful storyteller and creator of the best-selling adventures The Northern Lights and The Subtle Knife, mesmerizes us again with his playful, suspenseful thriller Count Karlstein. Readers young and old will revel in every angle, twist, and turn of this breathlessly paced, very funny page-turner. --Karin Snelson