Customer Reviews

Song for the Basilisk

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"Song for the Basilisk" ties with the Riddle-Master trilogy for my favorite Patricia McKillip book. However, I would advise reading her other books before this one; it is not as easily accessible as some.

"Basilisk" is the story of Rook, a musician who lives with the bards of Luly and has avoided his past for over thirty years. Eventually he is forced to remember, and he travels to the city of Berylon to right a decades-old wrong done to his family.

But "Basilisk" is not a typical revenge quest, and it holds far more than Rook's story. It tells the stories of Guilia Dulcet, a musician from the provinces; of Justin, a young man with secret plans; of Luna Pellior, the Basilisk's mysterious and powerful daughter; of Hexel Barr, the distracted, irate composer; of Damiet Pellior, the Basilisk's other daughter; of Hollis, Rook's impatient and protective son; and other intriguing characters.

I have read this book many times, and each time it quickly pulls me into a dreamworld where everything is hidden or cast in a new light. Yes, the characterizations are subtle, and the magic is unexplained. Yes, the first few pages are confusing the first time. Yes, the story moves slowly. However, if you accept the book on its own terms, it is rewarding, and will linger with you for weeks.

This is one of the few books I can read over and over, and never find myself skipping ahead to the "good parts." The whole book is that good.

I tend to read fantasy novels at a gallop, eager to see what new trick or monster pops out at me on succeeding pages. Reading a good fantasy is usually like watching a good magic show: one surprise after another. There is suspense and breathless anticipation that is quickly resolved by the next sleight-of-hand.

However, Patricia McKillip's novels are not like a conjuror's act. They make you work. They make you read slowly. Her clues are subtle and woven into the beautiful, but dense thicket of her text. This is especially true in "Song for the Basilisk". The novel is every bit as complex and beautiful as its jacket painting by Kinuko Craft, but sometimes it made me feel like one of the princes trapped in the rose thicket outside of Sleeping Beauty's castle. I wanted to follow the little boy Rook from his hiding place in the ashes, through his coming-of-age as a bard, to his eventual confrontation with the monster who destroyed his family. But it was hard. I kept getting hooked on the beautiful scenery, and the complex subplots, and the other intricately fashioned characters. The ancient, blind Reve Iridia and her haunting music, and Luna Pellior, the Basilisk's daughter, were such strong and interesting characters that they positively upstaged Rook/Caladrius/Griffin every time they appeared with him on the same stage.

"Song for the Basilisk" is definitely worth reading, and savoring, and rereading. My only advice to the reader who is new to Patricia McKillip, is to start with her "The Riddlemaster of Hed" trilogy, or "The Book of Atrix Wolfe". They are equally magical books, but more accessible.

Patricia McKillip has composed an opera purely of words. Don't let that description put you off: I don't generally like opera, but I loved this book. After the disappointing _Winter Rose_ and _The Book of Atrix Wolfe_, she's back at the peak of her form. The plot is pure opera: a ruthless tyrant, the Basilisk, massacres a rival family. The sole survivor, a young boy, crawls from the ashes and escapes into hiding in the far north, growing up with music and magic at the ancient school for bards. The Basilisk's gaze reaches even there, however, and the boy, now a grown man with a teenaged son of his own, is compelled to return to the city of his birth for revenge. There he meets the Basilisk's beautiful daughter (not to mention the Basilisk's brute of a son, the Basilisk's other, airheaded daughter, the Basilisk's court musicians and music director...). Wacky antics ensue.

Patricia McKillip's characters burst with life: they breathe, they bleed, they sing, they ineptly plot revolution, they play in palaces and taverns, they go on murderous rampages, they throw temper tantrums and wield strange magics. She creates some of the coolest musician characters I've ever read about. She goes one better on the er-hu, the two-stringed, bowed, Chinese peasant instrument, and gives us the picochet, a one-stringed, bowed, peasant instrument. It makes the crops grow, she tells us. Remembering my experience with my father's er-hu (I was only able to produce feeble, distressed whines), I empathized (and laughed helplessly) at the ordeals of the Basilisk's unmusical younger daughter (not to mention her teachers). At least the girl was blessed with shameless unselfconsciousness.

Patricia McKillip gives us an opera within the opera, one that reflects the main plotline much like Hamlet's play within the play, with even more startling effects when performed before the old tyrant. She shows us the process of composition, in loving detail, while the book itself is the performance. As always, McKillip knows exactly how to use her words. Her writing style is elegant, spare. In this book, she succeeds in creating a satisfying story to match the beauty of the prose.

...but not as good as it ought to be. McKillip's language, as always, is beautiful and dreamlike, and her imagery is beautiful too. But I found the first section opaque and slightly diffuse. It was hard to tell what was going on; indeed, the whole thing felt like a rather disjointed dream.

The rest, however, was much better. I was captivated by the characters: Caladrius, the hero who falls over his heritage rather than discovering it; Giulia, the musician from the provinces who still sneaks out at night to play the picochet; Hexel, the eccentric composer; Dulcet, Arioso Pelior's brainless daughter; and Luna, also Arioso's daughter, one of the most bewitching characters in all of McKillip's books.

The plot? Like all of McKillip's books, it is at once simple and complex, a single narrative that twists and turns unexpectedly. Many years ago, Arioso Pelior seized control of Berylon, destroying Tormalyne House which had formerly ruled it. But one child--the heir--hid in the ashes of a fireplace and survived. He was taken to the Bards' school on Luly, and there he lived for a long time in secrecy, until at last he was driven to finding out who he was. When he did, he set off for the city where Arioso pelior--the Basilisk--lived, and where he, a group of Tormalyne supporters, and music school would collide in the midst of a fateful opera.

"The Book of Atrix Wolfe" remains for me the best work I have read by Patricia McKillip, and by comparison, this book does not quite measure up, at times being more dream-like in its exposition, not always clearly illuminating the basis for certain actions and resolutions. Nonetheless, the quality of dream contributes to much of the book's magic, combining with the author's rich prose and inimitable imagination to deliver a tale far superior to most other fantasy. And while not all the magic that takes place is clearly explained, as George R.R. Martin recently emphasized at one of his readings, magic retains its wonder through its causes and characteristics remaining partially hidden, otherwise becoming, through too clear an exposition, a mere reflection of science.

Similar to "Atrix Wolfe," and in some ways unlike the earlier "Winter Rose," McKillip returns here to meditations upon the meaning of words, while at the same time more fully exploring the secret powers of music first examined in the earlier "Riddle-Master" trilogy. These underlying themes follow a structure and tone more reminiscent of "The Book of Atrix Wolfe" than "Winter Rose," though the realm of faerie so prominent in the two former books are here barely hinted at. Instead, this tale is more archetypically fantasy, a tale of struggle between good and evil houses, revealed through the magical lyricism that has come to distinguish McKillip's work.

Those that have criticized a lack of emotional characterization I believe have missed a strong and metaphoric chord running throughout the work, as well as underestimated the significance of emotions shown through the subtle gestures and actions of the characters. While the inner dialogue found in "Winter's Rose" is absent, here it instead becomes fully realized in the nuances of the characters' actions: the assembling of a cage of mirrors by Luna, Damiet's fitful gestures, Caladrius' revelation of his character through the various guises he assumes and the instruments that he plays. While perhaps not as readily accessible as some of McKillip's earlier works, there is a richness of subtlety just as rewarding for those who read closely.

A marvelous book: one that will reward, as have all her recent works, repeated and additional reading. Though her tales may not offer ready appeal to those seeking swords and sorcery, there is little question that the author's works are among the few and very best that fantasy has to offer.

It's a too-rare gift to be able to write prose like poetry, but Patricia McKillip has mastered the art. It took me a while to get past the first few chapters, but then the plot caught up speed into a magical, political story about love, revenge, music and memory.

A burned child with only vague memories of fire is brought to the bard's island of Luly, raised and marries there. Rook Caladrius and his wife have a son, Hollis, but the bards are slowly drifting from Luly to the mainland, Hollis among them. Caladrius stays where he is, until a young man named Griffin Tormalyne, one of the last of a great ruling house that was overthrown by the Basilisk, arrives seeking great power. Caladrius realizes that he cannot escape his shrouded past any longer, and sets off for the capitol city.

Elsewhere, the magister Giulia Dulcet spends divided time between the Tormalyne music school, and the taverns where she plays the single-stringed picochet. But soon she is called away to teach one of the Basilisk's daughters (he has two: smoldering sorceress Luna Pellior and the less intelligent, rather ignored Lady Damiet). She is aided by the mysterious Caladrius, who helps to teach Damiet how to play the picochet and how to sing. Damiet, who has previously thought mostly of clothing, begins to fall for Caladrius.

At the taverns where Giulia once sang, there is a growing rebellion against the Basilisk. Near the decayed husk of Tormalyne Palace, powerful political figures and wandering idealists band together for a political coup, with Hollis assisting them. But something exists that is far more powerful than mere troops: the magic that the Basilisk wields.

The heroes strike out against the sinister, aging despot and are caught in a clash of magic and music, between the dying symbol of an evil Basilisk and the last survivor of the Tormalyne family.

It's astonishing how real Patricia McKillip's dreamy books seem, but the political themes and the sad remnents of the proud Tormalyne family give it an added dimension of reality. As usual, her magic is not the slam-bang-whizz of most fantasy books, but an underlying whisper. You can feel it in the playing of the music, the island of Luly, the forest where Caladrius finds his flute, and the husk of the Tormalyne palace. And not everything happens pleasantly--not everything twists to the way it should be in an ideal world, and not every injustice or crime can be reversed. McKillip recognizes and acknowledges this.

Her characters are also very real. I particularly liked the composer Hexel, who spends half the book bewailing that he can't write without his muse and then scribbling furiously. Giulia Dulcet, Luna and Damiet are all excellently drawn: strong, intelligent Giulia, the powerful sorceress Luna who is far more than she seems to be, and the neglected Damiet who becomes so attached to the first person to treat her with real kindness. Because of his soul-scarred state, I found it a bit difficult to connect with Caladrius for a while, but once he got to the city things smoothed out a little. The Basilisk is a darker horse, though, as we don't really learn why he's so rotten. And Hollis and Justin are so sexy...

The first few chapters, with half of Rook's life passing on Luly, are a bit difficult to wade through but after that the plot picks up speed. Her writing style is, as always, beautiful and evocative; my favorite scene may be the part where the white basilisk appears, bit by bit, in each mirror in the hall, followed by the statues that Luna summons. This book is also tempered with a bit of humor that pops up sometimes (Damiet's assigning a dress to each song; Hexel asking rhetorically what lovers think of aside from love, and Giulia's reply, "Clothes?")

All in all, a beautiful fantasy novel with a wonderful writing style and a spellbinding story. Excellent!

Words, the nameless child is told when he reaches the island of Luly, are what being a bard is all about. Found hiding in the burnt ruin of Tormalyne Palace, at first unable to speak or even remember his own name, the black-eyed boy is given the name Rook Caladrius and raised as a bard, among words. As usual, Patricia McKillip's own use of words is detailed, jeweled, precise; the world she creates, with its central city of Berylon, the wild hinterlands and the farming provinces, and Luly, the lonely rock in the sea, is rich and many-layered.

Unlike many a traditional fantasy, "Song for the Basilisk" does not have as its hero the young man with the mysterious heritage, the mystical powers, the drive to discover his past. Rook lives on at Luly, fathering a son and learning to play various instruments without ever taking the name of bard; with the exception of a brief, abortive effort to learn his past when as a young man, no mention is made of his history for thirty-seven years. The catalyst comes when a young man, calling himself Griffin Tormalyne after the dead heir of Tormalyne House, comes to Luly to learn magic: he wishes to defeat the Basilisk, Arioso Pellior, Prince of Berylon, who rose to power nearly forty years ago in a bloody war that destroyed Tormalyne House entirely and left two others cowering under his fist. Rook is disinclined to take any interest in politics, especially those far from home, but Griffin is only the first in a chain of events that precipitates him toward Berylon, where he becomes entangled in a web of intrigue forming in the unlikeliest places: a tavern called the Griffin's Egg, the Tormalyne School of Music, and an opera written by a moody and melodramatic composer.

Other characters surface out of the flow, clearly drawn and detailed: Giulia Dulcet, a magister of music who sneaks out evenings to play her picochet, a country instrument out of place in the Basilisk's elaborate court; Hexel Barr, the aforementioned composer constantly in search of inspiration; Hollis, Rook's son who follows his father into the city; and the Basilisk's two daughters, dull but beautiful Damiet, and the enigmatic, dragon-eyed Luna. Their interactions weave the core of the story, but McKillip's flawless prose strengthens as well as decorates. "Song for the Basilisk" is not to be missed, not for its tale or its truths. My only complaint is that it should come with a CD of Hexel's opera.

A Song For the Basilisk was a very well written book. My favorite character was Rook/Caladrius/Griffin (of course), the boy who was 'one with the ashes' and could not remember his past until the trip to the mysterious 'hinterlands'. His past, present, and future were uncertain throughout the whole book, but I liked imagining what happened in the past and what would happen in the future. I loved the suspense after Caladrius had reached the Basilisk's house, and loved guessing what would happen after he got there. One thing that I didn't like as much about the book was I would have liked for the characters to, maybe, have been more in depth. It's like McKillip only scratched the surface of thier emotions, and I didn't get a real feel for them. Although I did not like this, it was still a very good book. The end was a twist for me.... it was the last thing I expected to happen! If you love fantasy, I recommend this book, and McKillip's others (all very good!)

I'm obliged to begin by informing you that McKillip is my favorite author. So am I biased? Yes, but for a good reason.

If you haven't read a book by her before, I wouldn't necessarily start with this one. It's a heady introduction to her elegant language, where words are like paints applied with the most delicate of brushes. I'd suggest _The Forgotten Beasts of Eld_ to start with. Instant love, I promise, if you're into lyrical high fantasy.

For veterans of her work: you will not be disappointed. As always, McKillip twists love and loss together in a complex plot, although not one with incredible depth. The telling of the tale exceeds the tale itself--even while you're bewildered, you're lost in the atmosphere she so deftly creates. I was seized by the very first sentence and drawn on by her unique world and language. The end holds what was for me a pleasant surprise, but one that isn't a blatant deux ex machina. I personally believe she found a full and satisfying closure to it all.

Her characters are richly, gravely compelling. And woven right beside is her delightful strand of subtle humor that never seems to jar with the somber, powerfully emotional parts of her story. I think I read her work as much to learn (I'm an aspirant writer) as to enjoy. As for the latter--I'm sure you will, too.

Thirty-seven years ago, the Pelloir House of the Basilisk wiped out the Trevalyn House of the Griffin - all except for the heir to the house. Now, having finally come to grips with himself, Rook Caladrius (nee Griffin Tormalyne) sets out from the Bard's Island of Luly to confront his past. Involving intrigue, adventure, and a gripping set of characters, Song for the Basilisk is an excellent read, whether you've read McKillip before or are a long-time fan.

Alas, there are a few drawbacks to the book. McKillip's intention, as the title suggests, is an exploration of music upon the world. However, McKillip falls short of her mark, often wandering off to explore fabrics, color, art and language over the effect of tone and harmony. On the positive side, however, "Song for the Basilisk" is one of McKillip's few novels that does *not* include a completely incomprehensible ending (no "opening the mouth and speaking leaves" or some such interesting but utterly confusing image) - making this book an excellent introduction for the first time McKillip reader.

Recommended for everyone, particularly lovers of McKillip's other works, those who enjoy Robin McKinley's style, and those searching for political fantasy.