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The Chimes
- Narrated by: Luke Kempner
- Length: 9 hrs and 22 mins
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The Chimes
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Publisher's Summary
Longlisted for the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards, 2016
Longlisted for The Man Booker Prize, 2015
Shortlisted for the World Fantasy Awards, 2016
Longlisted for The Man Booker Prize, 2016
Winner of the World Fantasy Awards, 2016
After the end of a brutal civil war, London is divided, with slums standing next to a walled city of elites. Monk-like masters are selected for special schooling and shut away for decades, learning to write beautiful compositions for the chimes, played citywide morning and night, to mute memory and keep the citizens trapped in ignorance.
A young orphan named Simon arrives in London with nothing but the vague sense of a half-forgotten promise to locate someone. What he finds is a new family - a gang of scavengers that patrols the underbelly of the city looking for valuable metal to sell. Drawn in by an enigmatic and charismatic leader, a blind young man named Lucien with a gift for song, Simon forgets entirely what originally brought him to the place he has now made his home.
In this alternate London, the past is a mystery, each new day feels the same as the last, and before is considered "blasphony". But Simon has a unique gift - the gift of retaining memories - that will lead him to discover a great injustice and take him far beyond the meager life as a member of Lucien's gang. Before long he will be engaged in an epic struggle for justice, love, and freedom.
The Chimes is an impressive work of speculative fiction, an imaginative adventure elegantly told. The Chimes reveals the human capacity to create both beauty and terror, in art and in life.
What the critics say
"A highly original dystopian masterpiece, an intricately imagined, exquisitely invoked world in which music instills order and ravages individuality . . . Smaill is a poet and a classically trained violinist, and both these skills shine in this lyrical novel steeped in the language of music . . . clearly marking her as an exciting new writer to watch."—Geraldine Brooks, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of March
"something strikingly new"—Lit Hub
"Smaill's clever use of musical terms in her characters' speech adds to the immersive quality of the work, and her melodious prose lures the reader like a pied piper. With literary trappings but a solidly speculative heart, The Chimes is a cantata of pure delight."—Jaclyn Fulwood, Shelf Awareness (Starred Review)