Customer Reviews

Singer of Souls

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

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.

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

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.

A quick scan of the review indicates that there are two main camps here - those who find the ending edgy and those who see it as vandalism, as pointless as painting a mustache on the Mona Lisa. I have to agree with the vandalism people. If the author had foreshadowed it, I would not have cared for the effect, but it would have been acceptable. However, sprung jack-in-the-box-like as it was, one can only wonder what the author's point was.
"Life is senseless, so books can be, too"?
"Junkies are junkies and no matter how much they seem to have changed, they are really still cold, self-centered jerks and shame on you for being fooled by them"?
"It's my book, I owe the reader nothing, and I can do what I want"?

I really don't know nor do I, at this point, care. And it's too bad, too, because the author has the potential.

The two most important things to know about this book:
1. It is a faery tale.

2. It is *not* a disney faery tale.


Adam's first solo novel is still running through my head and in the end, I'm not entirely sure I liked it; Singer of Souls will stay in my library, but it may be a while before I can re-read it. I sure didn't know what I was getting into. It is 'good' from the perspective that while I did not see most of the big turns coming, retrospectively, they made sense.

It's also worth noting that Singer of Souls, while somewhat reminiscent of some of the faceted-darkness works of Charles DeLint, perhaps owes more to the deeply incestuous music/literary scene of the twin cities. This interconnected group of serious local musicians has involved, off-hand, emma bull, will shetterly, neil gaiman, and steven brust. Heck, a former band, Cats Laughing, now has 3 published authors as alumni, in Emma Bull, Steven Brust, and Adam Stemple. As a former observer of this musical/literary scene, I can't believe no one has done a PhD dissertation on it yet.

In conclusion, read the book, but don't say you weren't warned.

If you are serious about fantasy, this is a good book. If you are serious about happy endings, this is a bad book.

Adam Stemple has a wonderfully readable and likable voice as an author. He hooked me from page 1 and I didn't want to put the book down. That is why the ending is so devastating. Was it a lack of maturity on his part? Was it a desire to startle the reader? Was it an intentional statement trying to separate his identity from that of his mother (Jane Yolen)?

The only way I'll ever know is if he writes the sequel that this story is screaming for.

This book had such wonderful potential. Like others who reviewed this book I don't always expect a happy ending, but the vindictive torture and maiming here was so unnecessary. What marvelous character development there is in the first nine tenths of the story. It was a joy to read and I was completely hooked. Everytime I had to put it down I couldn't wait to have even 10 minutes to read some more. Then, it's as if the author let some evil child with a poison pen (or one of his nasty-minded wee folk) write the ending. There should have been a couple hundred more pages in this book. I would love to see this book republished with an ending that is worthy of the rest of the story. My recommendation? Don't bother reading this unless you love to feel disappointed and thrive on let downs.

I'm not a big reader of fantasy so when I say this book is unique, perhaps it's more just unique to me. I read Singer of Souls several years ago but it is one of those books that sticks with you. Besides unique the story is haunting and lately it was haunting me to read again. I don't read books more than once often. But of course I couldn't remember the title or author. After about an hour of searching google with terms the combo of busking, faeries and festival found the book and now that I found it I'm going to go read it again. I also noticed that a sequel has come out since Steward of Songs- BONUS!

There are a lot of well thought out and explained reviews already, so I am not going to elaborate very much. I agree with most of the reviewers regarding Stemple's engaging and authentic voice. I think he has tremendous potential as an author. I similarly agree that the ending was botched. Where I disagree with many reviewers is that the book's failure at the end deserved an overall rating of one or two stars. I do still recommend this book to any lovers of dark fantasy. You can put it down as the plot begins spiraling toward oblivion and it will have been worth the read. Stemple's engaging voice is rare enough that he's worth a few hours of your time to just enjoy his prose and the promising plot that he's laid out, even if he doesn't fully deliver in the end.

As the blurb on the book states, this is a wonderful first effort from the author. I admire his way with words. I never knew music could be so interesting - he casts a spell using musical terminology.

As other reviewers acknowledge the book goes to some unexpected places. His is not a faeryland of sweetness and light. I suspect that the story actualy got out of control and the author did not know how to rein it in. When I look back at the character he created though I do think the end of the tale was what it had to be. No one was a hero, every one lived the life they had set out on. As I neared the end of the book I wondered how he could possibly end it. I am pleased that he didn't go for the trite happily ever after. But it does beg the question of whether the main character is capable of redemption.

Maybe not, that's life. You could say that the faeryland of his imagination got what it deserved.

That's not to say it was long enough. I think the end was rushed, as too many promising books are. (Here I could digress to say sometimes one book is too short when it's a really good story while more experienced authors can drag things out for 3 or more books without adding to the story.)

I'm sorry I can't do justice to this author in a review - read it for yourself. I will read whatever he writes next.