Wages of Sin

Written by Suzy Spencer

Narrated by Nikki Zakocs

A Defiled Body



On January 11, 1995, deputies outside Austin, Texas, found a mutilated body laid across a cold campfire—head destroyed, hands cut off, skin singed by fire. In less than three days, they had the kill zone: a small apartment, where shy Christopher Hatton was shot at point blank range in his bed.



The Stripper And The Loser



Stephanie Lynn Martin, despite her devout Southern Baptist upbringing, was reborn as a sultry stripper and calendar girl. William M. Busenburg was a good-looking wannabe living his own lies. They came together in an explosion of violence and sex. Then they decided there was only one thing missing from their romance: murder.



The Thrill Of The Kill



But within days, they were under arrest and savvy prosecutors learned the ugly truth behind the senseless slaughter of Busenburg's friend. How twisted fantasies of murder fueled the couple's lust and led to the unspeakable crime. And how they both tried to cover up their heinous deed . . . until they finally ran out of lies.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tantor Media, Inc
• Release date: Oct 25, 2022
• ISBN: 9798765050262

Reviews for Wages of Sin

[deckdonna · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I read a good amount of alternate history, and "The Wages of Sin" by Harry Turtledove is probably the best of the genre I've read lately.

By the mid nineteenth century older girls and women are secluded in their homes. When they need to go outside they wear shapeless garments that cover their bodies and faces. They can't go anywhere on their own. They can't meet other people or socialize in public. Such strict rules were brought about in an attempt to stop the spread of The Wasting (HIV).

Viola and Peter are two young people matched by their parents. When Peter goes to university to study law, Viola stays home (the women always stay home) but finds ways to be productive. Their courtship happens via post as they share truths about themselves.

This was an enjoyable, if tense, read. With each new chapter I felt dread that I might read of one character or another showing signs of infection, and felt that something menacing was only a page turn away. I still have concerns.

This would be a great book to sit and discuss with those who have read history, law, religion, and sociology.

[richardderus · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Rating: 2* of five

The Publisher Says: A terrifying tale about HIV spreading in the early sixteenth century by an author, Publisher Weekly calls “The Master of Alternate History.”

What if HIV started spreading in the early 1500s rather than the late 1900s? Without modern medicine, anybody who catches HIV is going to die. A patriarchal society reacts to this devastating disease in the only way it knows it sequesters women as much as possible, limiting contacts between the sexes except for married couples. While imperfect, such drastic actions do limit the spread of the disease.

The ‘Wasting’ (HIV) has caused devasting destruction throughout the known world and severely limited the development of technology as well, creating a mid-nineteenth century England and London almost unrecognizable to us. This is the world Viola is born into. Extremely intelligent and growing up in a house full of medical books which she reads, she dreams of travelling to far-off places, something she can only do via books since her actions and movements are severely restricted by both law and custom.

Meticulously researched and exquisitely detailed in a way only a master like Harry Turtledove can do, this book is a tour-de-force from one of the best historical and alternate history writers ever to write in the genre.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Big ideas chopped to bits, tossed around some, then left to collapse where they collided. Are we in the 1509 Congolese-disease plot? The 1850s jerkoff's plot? (That is more literal than figurative here.) What made me read the book was Turtledove. Why I finished it was Turtledove. I disliked its underdeveloped alt-hist; I deeply disliked the crude and demeaning language, though both period and setting appropriate; I never felt as though, unlike a certain character, the story ever got near a climax as Viola and Peter, the straight people whose story I expected (not unreasonably) this to be, spend the entire story apart. Then, after a betrayal, a confession, and a shocking comeuppance(!), all conducted by letters between them, there's a wedding and...

...off you and I go. Contracts all fulfilled, we have a story that does the absolute bare-bones minimum. This can't be all, thought I, but indeed it was. Please note there is absolutely not more than one tiny whiff of gayness, of sodomy as an act, of the merest hint of the existence of queers at all. In three hundred pages about AIDS.

Now it's the poor straight women get all the fallout of the AIDS epidemic because, I guess, there weren't gay people in 1509 Congo (great, let's put the source of the STD plague in Africa...at least it's a change from South America's factual syphilis plague...then switch to straight people in whiter-than-white England! Ignoring Africa thereafter! It's the twenty-fucking-first century, colonialism is on the cross so let's drop it, k?)

So I think I'm being pretty magnanimous with two stars.