5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
GREAT! A Full Story with a hard-landing finish., January 20, 2006
This review is from: Singer of Souls (Hardcover)
Adam Stemple has created an interesting and engaging story which crosses from our world to faery. From the very beginning, the books pulls you in. The story is well told and the language flows perfectly. You won't find yourself stumbling over clumsy style or grammatical errors. Most notable he establishes a fascinating relationship between music and magic.
The characters are full and often dark. Watch out for Father Croser...Whoa!
We could do with out the one sex scene, which is boring and obviously plays to the fantasy of male readers with little experience. Of course you might laugh too since it's so incredibly over the top cheesy.
The pace near the ending of the book changes suddenly. It took me by surprise anyway, and unpleasantly so. Days later I'm still digesting and can't quite get it out of my head. But upon reflection, it all makes sense. The main character stumbles into a world where his only talent becomes his greatest power. Sympathies, loyalties and positions change, dramatically.
If you need a feel good, fuzzy, happy ending this story is NOT for you! Personally I can't wait for the sequel.
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
wild urban fantasy, July 27, 2005
This review is from: Singer of Souls (Hardcover)
An addict trying to quit, guitarist Douglas knows he must leave Minneapolis and the temptation of his friends. He is estranged from his siblings and parents, so to dry out he heads to his Grandma McLaren in Edinburgh. While awaiting a passport he cuts a deal with Twin Town Guitar owner Zack Johannson.
A few weeks later, his grandma welcomes Douglas, but sets three conditions that if he does any he is out. Douglas makes money with his guitar and a gift for rhyme. When the city hosts the annual Edinburgh International Festival and the Fringe Festival, Douglas performs and does quite well until he meets Aine. She gives him a vial promising him he will see the world from a different light. He resists at first but finally takes the drug. Douglas questions his mind as he see fey folks walking the streets of the city; worse they see him with each wanting to either recruit him to their cause or kill him as Douglas learns how dangerous the war between the fey is even as humans thinks he tripped out one time too many.
SINGER OF SOULS is a wild urban fantasy starring a likable expatriate American struggling with controlling his addiction while wondering if he finally went over the edge as the only human who sees the Fey and more terrifying they see him. The story line starts off as a character study as the audience sees Douglas trying to kick the habit, but once he takes that step he feels like Alice through the looking glass. Fans will enjoy Adam Stemple's zany joy ride in the streets of Edinburgh from a distinctly weird perspective.
Harriet Klausner
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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
This Isn't Your Little Sister's Fantasy, August 22, 2005
This review is from: Singer of Souls (Hardcover)
There are books that stick in your head long after you have read them, an undigested lump. You worry over them, like a dog trying to get the last bit of meat off a bone. Books that do that are either very bad books, or very good books. "Singer of Souls" is not a very bad book. In the end, I don't quite know what to make of it, other than to say that it is a very good book which is stuck in my head.
Douglas "Doc" Stewart is a junkie. He's been clean for 20 days. How do you kick the habit? What do you need to do to actually get off the junk and stay off? If you stay where all your friends are junkies, it's just a matter of time, really. Looking the at the sharp point of the needle, Doc finally decides to implement his "emergency" plan: leave Minneapolis, fly to Edinburgh, and ask his Grandmother McLaren to take him in for a little bit.
He does, and she does, and Doc settles down to earn some money the way that he knows best: as a street musician. Turns out Edinburgh is a great town for busking. It's not even illegal.
Doc has the gift of rhyme. He can come up with unique couplets instantaneously and continue to reel them off for hours. For a dollar, he'll make up a song about you on the spot. If you like it, he'll record it on a cassette and sell it to you for five. He makes good money, as good as if he was working a steady job -- in fact, busking is a steady job, really. He gets up early, and plays until the sun goes down It's not an office, but it is work. It's a good life, until he sings a song for a beautiful woman, who turns out to be a faeiry. Suddenly, he's enmeshed in another world, with lives at stake, including his own.
The Faeiry aren't good, but they aren't precisely evil, either. Sensible people have always tried to avoid drawing their notice. The Faeiry are supernatural and dangerous, sometimes beautiful and sometimes ugly. They are bound by a set of moral rules that are unlike humans'. The humans, in turn, are bound by our own common morality; murder and stealing and hurting other people are bad, kindness and love are good. This intersection of values is opens an opportunity for one race to manipulate the other.
Stemple doesn't bother with a careful taxonomy of Faeiry. There's no discussion of the Seelie and the Unseelie court, a detailed history of the conflict between them, nor any long tellling of legends about their powers and their past. If the reader knows a lot of folk lore, then what they know fits into what they are reading. and If the reader isn't a mythology buff, everything they need to know is there in the book, without obscure references or long explanations.
It allows the author to cause mystical edges and vistas to form for all of his readers, not just readers who know much, or little, about this cluster of myths. It also neatly gets Stemple out of the problem of resolving conflicting stories, which would require explanation rather than experience. The story is immediate, you feel it in your skin, instead of looking down to watch it from a great height.
"Singer of Souls" rarely goes where you expect it to. The sudden turns, while jarring, are also consistent with the characters, their history, and their motivations. There is nothing gratuitous about the abrupt corners "Singer of Souls" takes. It all follows logically from an illogical world.
There is almost nothing sweet in this novel, though there is kindness and strength. There is even heroism. It is cold and uncompromising, which is as it should be. Humans rarely come off with the better end of a bargain with Faeiry, and all who encounter the Queen of Faeiry are profoundly changed by the experience.
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