The Scrivener's Tale

core novel 2012 The Quickening

Record

First published	2012
Original language	EN
Work type	novel
Canon status	core
Reader rating	3.75 (691 ratings, collected 2026-10-11)
Page count	512
First-edition ISBN	9780732292454

Synopsis

In the bookshops and cafés of present-day Paris, ex-psychologist Gabe Figaret, now a writer working in a bookshop, is trying to put his shattered life back together. When Reynard, a doctor and one of his regular customers, asks him to mentor a delusional young patient, Gabe is reluctant until he meets her: Angelina, shy, nearly mute and, Gabe soon realises, not quite what she seems. Under hypnosis he hears her frantic voice in his mind; then an attempt is made on his life, and his life in Paris becomes increasingly unstable. Angelina tells him that he must kill her and absorb her spirit, which will let her carry them both through a portal into Morgravia, the medieval realm she describes, where she can prove that he is the scrivener able to interpret the language of the gods, and save a queen and a land from destruction.

Where it sits

• Universe: The Quickening
• Series: not part of a registered series (standalone work within its universe)
• Author: Fiona McIntosh

Notes

• Voyager (HarperCollins Australia), 1 November 2012; Harper Voyager US 2013. A standalone novel set partly in present-day Paris and partly in Morgravia, the world of the Quickening trilogy.

Neighbouring works

Publication order and internal chronology are tracked as two separate orderings and are never conflated: a book's place in one says nothing about its place in the other.

• Publication order, within The Quickening (standalone work): position 4 of 4: previous Bridge of Souls (2004)

Sources

• Wikipedia
• City of Ryde Library (OverDrive publisher description)
• Booktopia (HarperCollins Australia edition record)
• Harper Voyager (publisher description)

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Part of the Library. Fields without an identified source are omitted, never guessed.