Customer Reviews

Son of Spellsinger

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

 

 

Don't get me wrong, the Spellsinger series was great and will forever be one of the best fantasy series i've read. So when I heard about the sequel to it, and it was going to be about his son, I got really excited. It was an okay book to be honest. Not spectacular, not completely horrible. Big problems with it though. The idea to make it about rap music seemed a bit contrived, don't get me wrong I love hip-hop, but when reading it the rapping just seemed silly. This book was okay give it a try if you liked the Spellsinger series, maybe one of these days Mr. Foster will write a better sequel (don't get me started on Chorus Skating...._

Whilst the plot of the book is perfectly passable, the problem with this book is very simple.

Alan Dean Foster knows, fundamentally, nothing about rap. Whilst in the previous books the musical connection was obviously based on things that he knew about, this attempts to update itself by changing the musical style used from rock and roll to rap. Unfortunately, the attempts to create convincing rap lyrics fall completely flat. This results in a book which continually shoots itself in the foot by juddering to an awkward halt each time this occurs.

For heaven's sake -- I've read better parodies of rap music in Mad magazine..

"Son of Spellsinger" is the seventh volume in the Spellsinger series, this time with the son of Jon-Tom alongside the two otter cubs of colleague Mudge.

Back cover of book:

Call Him - Spellmaster B

Much to Clothahump the Wizard's distress, ex-hippie Jon-Tom and otherworldly Talea's son Buncan wants to be a questing hero, but not a spellsinger. Instead, he forms a band with Mudge's kids, otters Nocter and Squill, one that creates a wild, unpredictable magic - based on rap!

Then an anteater arrives with rumors about a dangerous legend. Soon the young rappers, aided by a drunk rhino, are off on an odyssey to a fortress where evil sorcerers threaten the world. And where only the unknown power of Buncan's beat can stop the hordes of hideous hybrids.

Son of Spellsinger

The next generation of mayhem and magic begins...

End back cover of book.

Even though at the end of "The Time of the Transference" Mudge had more than two cubs, it is understood he has only two. Also Nocter on the back cover is called Neena throughout the novel yet in the next volume "Chorus Skating" is back to Nocter. Such inconsistencies are unforgivable.

Overall I believe the story would have been more enjoyable had the author stuck with what worked, Jon-Tom and Mudge. Any offspring of the great duo does not seem proper when one is a cheap clone of the parent with the equivalent idiosyncrasies. It is the same brand of humor and problems but different individuals.

Other new characters are likable and the object of the quest is very witty. The nature of otherworldly devices in a magical world continues to amaze but having the rapping offspring tackle the adventure grew tiresome.

Thank you.

Most of the Spellsinger books concern the adventures of idealistic Los Angeles native Jon-Tom as he struggles to cope with being lost in the Wizard's World, a dimension of high magic and talking humanoid animals. Each time, the machinations of the phlegmatic wizard Clothahump or Jon-Tom's desires to help people and return home get him involved in some kind of quest to the back-end of nowhere -- sometimes literally.

In Son of Spellsinger, Jon-Tom is married and settled down. Rumors of a thingie called the Grand Veritable turn up, but Jon-Tom's not interested in a treasure hunt. Instead, his son Buncan teams up with the children of his otter sidekick Mudge to form a rap band and take off after the treasure.

Jon-Tom casts spells by performing rock and metal songs, and it's obvious that Foster is an encyclopedia on the subject. It's a cool image. Buncan and his friends, however, cast spells by making up kindergarten-level rap lyrics vaguely appropriate to the situation that coincidentally parody real rap songs.

Buncan and his friends are not very likeable compared to Jon-Tom and Mudge. The music-magic is painful instead of cool, and the reliance on puns and dumb sight gags calls to mind Piers Anthony ... except that Anthony's BETTER at it. And the overall plot just meanders from place to place; it's less a grand quest and more a haphazard stroll. It almost feels like Foster had only a germ of an idea to start with, and was writing for the page count.

Gah. Do yourself a favor and stop reading with Time of the Transference.