Booklog 87/2024: T. Kingfisher: A Sorceress Comes to Call – Audiobook

[jacey]

Narrated by Zoe Mills.
Cordelia, age 14, is the daughter of Evangeline, a sorceress who can and does make Cordelia obedient by taking over her body. There are no secrets in the house, and Cordelia is not even allowed to close her bedroom door. Understandably, she is petrified of her mother and pours out all her secrets to Fallada, her mother’s beautiful white horse – an unwise move, as it turns out. Evangeline sets her cap at a wealthy squire and so, wangling an invitation to stay for herself and Cordelia, she begins a different kind of magic, that of attraction and seduction. But once in the squire’s house Cordelia gets a bedroom with a door she can close, a sympathetic lady’s maid and, better yet, the ear of Hester, the squire’s spinster sister, who though slow-moving with a gammy knee, is intelligent and kind, and has friends she can trust with the job of thwarting Evangeline. But this is more than just stopping a potential courtship when forbidden magic and murder come to the fore. I couldn’t put this down – listening until the wee early hours of the morning. The narrator is excellent at getting the voices just right, but a couple of consistently mispronounced words niggle me: reagent* pronounced as regent, and sigil** pronounced siggle, to rhyme with err... niggle. Is this the way these words are pronounced in the Americas? From context I’m pretty sure these are the correct words, though I’ve only listened and not seen the text.

*Reagent: a substance or compound that can facilitate a (chemical) reaction.

** Sigil: an inscribed or painted symbol considered to have magical power.

Comments

[gorgeousgary]

I'm from the Northeast United States (technically Mid-Atlantic but close enough) and I've always heard it as "ree-ayy-jent" (or perhaps "ree-eh-jent").

I have probably heard sigil both as "siggle" and "si-jill" though I can't recall which one dominated.

[jacey]

Siggle sounds really weird to me. It's definitely si-jill - even google agrees with me.

[heleninwales]

Ah! One learns something new every day. I always thought "sigil" had a hard "g". I don't pronounce it "siggle" though, to me it's been "sig-ill". But I've just checked the dictionary and it is indeed "sij-ill".

[jacey]

:-)