Customer Reviews

Spellsinger #01

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

these books are great reads, i loved them back in the day and i love them now but no way in hell am i paying top dollar for a fondly remembered re-read and i doubt mr. foster is getting much out of this deal. find them in a used book store for a buck a pop.

I remember buying all of these books when they came out years ago. It is a really good series but I can't believe they want full price for a series as old as this one. As noted in an earlier review, you can find these books fairly easily in used bookstores for $1-$3. That being said, if you like talking animals, weird characters, amazing magic and great storytelling then you will enjoy the series!

I have to disagree with a previous reviewer in one regard. I do think that the animals in the book are cute and funny. Granted, the animals act in realistic, sometimes noble, but more often crass ways. Part of the fun in this book is the sheer absurdness of the animals and the world at all.

I think you have to treat the book slightly humorously. I think humor was a great par of Mr. Foster's intent. The original cover has a bespectacled turtle on a boat with two humans and an otter. The turtle has drawers in his shell which open. I laughed quite hard the first time I looked at the cover. The hero gets to the fantasy world after smoking marijuana. The hero wins his battles and creates magic by playing and singing rock and roll.....BADLY.

A very fun book but also treat it as fun and not high fantasy.

I don't know WHAT the Amazon official review is about, because it's not this book.

At first it sounds like a bad joke. A college student getting stoned in his dorm room gets yanked through a dimensional portal by a senile wizard, and doesn't notice. He ends up on a world populated by talking animals and sword-and-sorcery stereotypes, and gets sent unwillingly on a quest.

What Foster does, however, is concentrate on giving us a street-level view of epic fantasy. The talking animals are not cute -- they're brutal and savage, as befits a medieval world. Magic is dangerous and unpredictable, and wizards are seen as lunatics. The threat from Ultimate Evil elicits more laughter from the populace than sympathy for the heroes' cause.

It's the very nastiness of the world that makes the book work. While I'd still call it comedic fantasy, the humor, even the fish-out-of-water bits, has a dangerous edge to it.

There are two problem areas I should note, however. The first is that the title, "Spellsinger," is very misleading; while musical magic is a theme in the book, it's rarely used. We won't learn much about actual spellsinging until the third book in the series.

The second is that the series begins to degrade quickly after the second book. Once the first major story arc is wrapped up, the remaining novels become increasingly light and frivolous in tone and the world-building becomes careless.

To get to know hippie student turned hapless magician Jon-Tom Merriweather and his gang of otherwordly buddies, ya gotta start at the beginning. The fun starts with this book ;-)

The Spellsinger is the best of the series. It has all the things that make a great fantasy novel: the battle of good against evil, an unwilling hero who reaches within himself for his inner strength to overcome great adversity, lots of twists and turn before the conflict is finally resolved. What makes the Spellsinger different is Foster's use of common things (music, talking animals) to achieve these goals. I got the sense that the author has put a lot of himself into the main character of Jon Tom. The animals, as humans in animal form, have great personalities. There's none of the Disney cuteness about these creatures and that gives this book the spice it needs to keep it from becoming too contrived or too precious. I read this book when it first came out years ago and I re-read it periodically and recommend it to my friends. While The Spellsinger and all it's sequels will never be accused of being great "literachoor", you will enjoy reading it.

I have read and worn bare my copy of this book. True, it was in the early 90's when I fist chanced upon a copy while boringly flipping through the local Book Mark store - but it was a treasure found.

Right now the lines still ring in my head as make me smile for its cute antics and sarcastically funny characters:

"Were you going to eat it?" - JonTom

"Nay, I were going to hang it between me neck and use it as a bloody pendant, I was..." - Mudge

A young law major and aspiring musician is accidentally pulled to another world of talking, clothed, and deadly animals when a tortoise wizard searching for an engineer to save his land ends up with Jon Meriweather, *sanitation engineer*. The adventures to follow include running from skunk bobbies with a very small and very deadly red head, accidentally summoning a cheer leader Jon has a crush on, and facing down a politically learned dragon. This is a fresh, mature perspective on fantasy, and a wonderful fun read that doesn't take itself too seriously.

'Spellsinger' is the first book of my favorite series' of books ever - namely, the Spellsinger series by Alan Dean Foster. Although Foster is an excellent writer, and I enjoy all of his works, I think his Spellsinger novels are some of the greeatest, freshest, most unusual and enjoyable writing to be found anywhere. I highly recommend trying this book out - for any fan of Fantasy, Science Fiction, or humorous Fiction. This is one of my favorite books [my absolute favorite, 'The Paths Of The Perambulator', is another book in this series]. Characters are endearing and memorable. Plots are unique and fun. This is a great book. Buy it!

I almost gave up on this book less than halfway through it. The only reason I kept reading was because I simply hate to leave a book unfinished.

You are thrown into a world of talking animals. Talking, dirty, perverted animals. There are stripping ermines, drunk rabbits, prostitute cats, etc. The first nearly half of the book is introducing you to this world that is disturbing in just a plain gross way. I had a really hard time getting attached to any of the characters at all because there were so few redeeming qualities about any of them, at least for the first part of the book. What would have been almost funny coming out of the mouth of a dirty-minded human, is just basically sickening coming out of the mouth of a perverted otter. I can't really adequately describe it. It just made me shudder. On top of it, the place seems like such a miserable world. No one seemed happy. They were all just drunk and dirty and violent. About 40% through the book, I was so disgusted with these characters and this world, that I didn't understand why we were supposed to care if their world ended or not. It seemed like it might be doing them all a favor.

However, around halfway through the book, when they finally set off on their journey, things start to get more interesting. The author quits trying so hard and actually focuses on the action. The characters start to develop in a way that you start to feel for them a bit more (although I still don't like that nasty otter) and I found myself forgetting I was reading about animals many times. There's also a few new characters introduced along the way who are just plain awesome. The Marxist dragon is hilarious. By the end, I had almost forgiven the author for that horrible start.

I was a little concerned about how much weed was going to be important to this book. Not being into that myself, I was afraid it would alienate me from the characters. It was brought up several times in the beginning and a little at the end, but not to the point that it was overwhelming. I knew from the product description it would be there, which was fine with me, but I was very pleased that it wasn't a main focus in the book and easily put out of my mind.

I have decided to read the 2nd book to see if it continues to improve. If it goes back to how it was at the start of the first, where everything is all about inter-species sex and getting high, then I'm done. I'm holding out hope though, because this has the potential to be such a good series.

If you can get past the nastiness of the beginning, this book is pretty good. I was really enjoying it by the end.