| Title | : | Spellsinger (Spellsinger, #1) |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0743498259 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780743498258 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 352 |
| Publication | : | First published March 1, 1983 |
Spellsinger (Spellsinger, #1) Reviews
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When I was young and dumb--even dumber than I am now--I spent a summer as a live-in staff member at a prestigious, World's-Top-Hideaways-list-making New Zealand luxury lodge, waiting tables and working housekeeping. For a hundred bucks a week in my pocket. This is one of the numerous downsides to having incredibly shitty parenting; no one to tell you, when you are young and dumb, that it is illegal for employers to pay less than minimum wage, that legally the lodge was allowed to charge me 9% of my gross wage for room and board and not a cent more, and that I was about to be exploited all to hell. Ah, rich people.
Before I arrived I dreamed of long summer evenings, hanging out with the other staff, swimming in the river, finding a cute local summer boyfriend, and having a great growth experience. Reality was slightly different. I was the only staff member living on site, no one hung out together, the lodge was a billion miles from civilisation (duh) and I only had a pushbike, all the male staff were married, and the locals were hostile (again, duh!).
That was the first Christmas Day I spent without seeing another human being. Also without eating anything, because staff meals were in the kitchen, which was (triple duh) closed for the day, because the whole lodge was closed for the day, and this had not occurred to me, literally, until Christmas morning.
Well, thank fuck for Alan Dean Foster's Spellsinger series. If I was prepared to turn myself into a sweat-dripping, overheated mess (and I was) I could cycle into the tiny local public library (where I BEGGED to be allowed to join, against all the residency rules: thank you, kind librarian), and I read my way through their entire fiction section (it was one wall). I lived for each week's Spellsinger volume. What could have been more apt for me than a story about a fish-out-of-water human with hidden magic talents, transported to a strange and hostile land. The hope that I too could be a speshul snowflake kept me from crying more than once a week (maybe twice . . . okay, three times).
I have never tried to re-read the series, because I fear Spellsinger isn't actually objectively particularly amazing, but I still have an overstrong affection for the song Sloop John B, and call the tiny moving dots in the side of one's field of vision 'gneechees'.
Thanks, ADF. -
Narnia meet Ted's Excellent Adventure. Sort of.
I'd make a lousy lawyer, he thought. And if I can't help thinking about power and mastery, well hell, I'm only human.
Maybe if I work real hard, he told himself, I can manage to overcome that.
I think we all know that wise turtles have a unique sense of humor and the concept of a suitable hero.
So, when Clothahump searches the universe between clouds of cof open minded concoctions looking for a powerful magical engineer, Jonathan-Thomas Meriweather -who until then was trying to relax about his thesis smoking pot- ends in a forest in front of a giant otter dressed as Disney's Robin Hood reject ... what a bad trip.
But wait, Jon-Tom is not a wizard, not a engineer, and don't want to be there to help some crazy turtle with a indentured bat assistant to avoid a... 'great evil'.
Mudge, the scoundrel otter, is put in charge of helping him to adjust to this world with talking animals, lizard transportation, everyday magic, proud birds, thieves logias, and medieval violence.
He is not happy.
The vision of Jon-Tom shifts when he discover his talen as Spellsinger (he can invoke things playing some kind of guitar and singing Earth songs)
The world is not different (furs,claws an feathers aside) from the all-human world. Prejudices and well known vices are around.
“Rare is the man, wizard, warrior, or worker, who can always think with his brains instead of his balls.
Because he don't forget the good stuff in there.
Tiene muchas alusiones al gobierno, prejuicio de clases, abundantes chistes de doble sentido, alusiones sexuales (y no olviden que la mayoria son animales), además de un dragón comunista . Lo que viene a ser bastante original en el mundo lleno de dragones acumuladores de riquezas, dejenme decirlo ;)
(note: this is not a stand alone book, ends without resolution and follow in the next book) -
*** 4 ***
I wish I had found this series when I was a teenager, because I would have been crazy about it at that time. This is a very imaginative world full of animals as intelligent as humans, most of them living together. The separation between the social groups are based on being warmbloods, insects, or arachnids. And the beetle type Creatures want war! Their magician has found an otherworldly help and they are sure they will bring slaughter to their warm-blooded enemies. In order to combat that evil, the old turtle wizard on the side of the warmbloods, finds a what he hopes is also a wizard, from another world - our California, to be exact. A young college student who wants to be a rock musician. Who happens to be high on grass most of the time 🙂.
I enjoyed it, but as I already said, I wish I had been quite a bit younger to truly appreciate it 😊. -
I don't know why I decided to reread this but I'm glad I did. I forgot how much I liked some of Alan Dean Foster's work.
Spellsinger is the first in a series about a law student/amateur musician, nicknamed Jon-Tom, who is transported to a world of magic and talking animals that is seriously not Narnia. Unless Narnia is now inhabited by alcoholic, fornicating, foul-mouthed, violent creatures.
Jon-Tom discovers that his fledgling musical talents have now manifested themselves as magical with the ability to conjure items via song.
Unfortunately the book stops before it really gets into the meat of why Jon-Tom was transported but it's still worth reading. I look forward to finally reading the rest of the series. -
This book kept surprising me. I would think the story would be headed to a certain conclusion, then go off on these delightful journeys I wasn't really expecting. When I read a typical fantasy novel I don't often find myself reflecting, but this book has a subtle introspective quality that left me with a smile. It echoes the quality and serves the same wit and humor of a better Discworld novel, and that should be reason enough to give it a try.
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This is one of those books that I read as a teen that I totally forgot about until I saw the title. Then I was like, "SPELLSINGER! I LOVED that book!," although I can't recollect why I loved it. It's just the feeling I got when I saw the title. If a book title alone can make me smile 20+ years after reading said book then there must have been something about it worth remembering.
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“The strange quasi-science [he] called magic. Or was the wizard right and science was really quasi-magic?”
Dreadfully slow pace. Almost quit after fifty pages; almost quit again fifty pages from the end when I realized nothing was going to happen in this volume. This story merely introduces the characters, world and issue for the greater series. Still, Foster tells a good story.
“This land he now found himself in was no more alien-appearing than Amazonian Peru, and considerably less so than Manhattan.”
Populating his world with human-like mammals is automatically works against stereotypes. In addition, Foster works counter expectations with an artsy male, who is repelled by the fantasy work he’s been thrown into, and an athletic female who embraces it.
“The appetite for evil far exceeds that of the benign.”
Many love these never-ending tales; I don’t. I won’t be back.
“It wouldn’t be any fun if it didn’t have any danger.” -
I read this when I was a kid and liked it. But reading it now as an adult, I am less than impressed. It's got talking animals so you'd think it was a kids book. But there is drug use and swearing. Not to mention that everyone is so violent that the popualtion of the planet shoudl have gone to nothing centuries before. Somehow the whole thing is supposed to be a political commentary of sorts, but it doesn't have any teeth to speak of. It's supposed to be funny, but I found it amusing at best, painful at worst.
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Read this book when I was in middle school and absolutely loved it. Having re-read it recently, however, I've noticed several inconstancies which really detract from the enjoyment of the book (for instance, in the first book horses are non-sentient, but can talk in later books.) I still enjoyed the books my second time through, but I really wish that Foster had spent more time proofing/editing his books.
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Or 'The movie Jim Henson never made but should have.' Anthropomorphic fantasy fun from the masterly pen of Alan Dean Foster. The Marxist dragon alone is worth the price of admission.
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What an interesting book. It starts off similar to The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, but the language is definitely not for kids. It's like Sci Fi took over some Fantasy and threw in a few words here and there that are "sciencey." There's also a long-going discussion sprinkled through the book between characters about Marxism, or some of the ideals, and that was pretty entertaining because the dialogue was used to keep another character's attention. I really enjoyed it, it's a quick read.
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Not my thing, although the writing was good and the world was set up well. I just didn't really like any of the characters, and the book just ended. The author set up a huge conflict, but this is clearly just the first volume. Too little happened in too long of a time. Glad it's over and not willing to slog through another book to find out what happens...don't care enough.
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Kept seeing this pop up on a bunch of classic's list. While the furry world building is interesting, the main character is not. Combined with the slow start and the extreme sexism, I DNF'd about the half way point.
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Sec 2020: supporting Mr Foster after the whole Disney Must Pay issue. I’m going to get books that he gets paid for instead of his novelizations where he is not getting paid for. Even though his Star Wars novels were childhood favourites
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Memories disappoint
I recall this from first reading it and enjoying it decades ago. Sadly for me it hasn't aged as well as I had hoped -
Please
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I'm going to start off by saying, I REALLY wanted to like this book. I love portal fantasies and from what I saw, this seemed to be right up my alley. I haven't been so sorely disappointed in a book in quite a while.
It's going to take a while for me to say everything I want to about this book, but here it goes.
First of all, I can't stand the main character Jon-tom. He, in a word, is boring. He is one of the most boring main characters i have come across in a while. He is such a milk toast, wonder bread, by the numbers protagonist it actually hurt.
After 400+ pages I could not determine what his personality was. He was literally just...main character. That's all i got from him. He is a college student who can play a guitar....that's...about all i got from him. Everything about this character is dull.
We're introduced to this guy and he just is IN this fantasy world. There's no introduction to him prior, he's just...there. so when he first shows up i just...i don't know anything about this guy, his backstory, nothing. He's just...there.
He's thrown into this world of anthropomorphic animals and his first thought is "where are some humans?" He KNOWS he's in another world and that these wouldn't be the same kind of humans, and all the animals speak English (for some reason. It's not explained why) but he feels he really NEEDS to talk to a human. He then meets a female who's the oh so original 'not the same as other girls' trope, and of course, he immediately wants to bang her.
which brings us to the second problem with this book. Okay, we're in a world of talking animals, but nothing really happens in the story to make this relevant. I don't FEEL like these characters are animals. Just saying "oh, he's an otter" doesn't make me believe he's an otter. There's no like..problems with not having an opposable thumb, or species relations, or anything like that. you're basically just TELLING me that they're a different species. I just found it very lazy as literally every single character could have been a human by replacing 3 words and you never would have known the difference.
Speaking of these problems, later in the book we're introduced to another female character who gets brought from our world, and i swear to god, no joke, her character flaw is "i'm too beautiful" i honest to god thought that was a joke. but no, the author was serious. like, here's an actual quote from the book. "That's my deformity Jon-tom. My lack of one. I'm cursed with beauty.... i'm not being facetious or boastful. It's something i've just had to try and live with."
Those are quite possibly some of the stupidest sentences i have ever read in a book. congratulations.
Ah yes. Characters. While we're on this topic, tell me if you can see the issue here.
otter: male
dragon: male
turtle: male
bat: male
rabbit: male
human: female
human: female
That's right. FIVE non-human tagalongs, and the only two females are humans. That just seems...weird? I don't know, first of all it's weird that you have humans AT ALL in your strange fantasy setting in which the author writes that the difference between the MC and the other humans are that...they're a little shorter? that's about it. That's just...that's just lazy. Also, why the hell aren't any female tagalongs non-human? That was such a strange thing to me, i was waiting for one of the group to be a non-human female but it never happened. Confused the hell out of me. Also, other than both being the object of MC's affections...that's basically all they're around for. Long story short, i've come to the conclusion that this author can't write females...like at all. So since he can't even write HUMAN females properly, there was no chance he was going to try a non-human one. There's only 2 non-human females that speak in the entire book. one's basically a fox prostitute and the other is an evil bug queen. So....yeah. there's that.
The book in itself just abruptly...kind of stops. Like, i honestly thought i was missing some pages at first. there's no wrap up, no big "here comes a battle!" or something..it just...kind of ends at the end of a paragraph. that confused the hell out of me.
World building wise? Eh. i've seen better. It's generic fantasy with no real twist. you'd think with "anthro animal world" there'd be some cool world building. NOPE!
I could go on and on about how this book disappointed me, but i think you get the jist of it by now. I REALLY wanted to like this book, but after finishing it, I just can't. A LARGE chunk of that being the fact that i can't stand the MC and how boring he is.
Overall, a 2/5. I can't give it a 1 because there was a good idea somewhere in here, but it was almost like the author was afraid to go too far and pulled back in most areas. The potential for this book was amazing, but was squandered, and that, honest to god is the worst part about it. 2/5. -
Amazing storytelling, proves Allan Dean Foster's versatility and breadth of imagination. This is the start of a series well worth your YA reader's time and consideration.
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I give it a 5/5 not because it is a perfect book but this world and characters really surprised me and it was a pleasure to experience it. And aaaaaa lot of humour.
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The Chronicles of Narnia for Adults
1 January 2013
The first thing that I probably have to say about this book is that it is effectively the Chronicles of Narnia for adults. While the main character is human, when he is transported to the world of Spellsinger, he is transported to a world inhabited by talking animals. Okay, not all of Lewis' characters in Narnia were talking animals, but a lot of them where. However, Narnia was originally written for children (not to say that adults don't enjoy them) while it is very clear, especially from the antics of Mudge the Otter, that this series is not.
The book is about how a pre-Law student at UCLA, Jon-Tom, is transported to the other world because the turtle wizard Clothahump is looking for a powerful magic user from our world, and believes that he needs the services of an engineer. Jon-Tom is an engineer, a sanitation engineer (that is a cleaner) however when he arrives in the world, he suddenly discovers that he is much more than a simple cleaner. When he gets his hands on an instrument (he is also in a garage band) it turns out that we he uses it magical things happen. What I mostly enjoyed about this series is the fact that when he played the instrument, he would play familiar rock songs from our world, with the resulting consequences.
Alan Dean Foster is probably more known for his novelisations of a number of movies. Actually, to me he is not, he is known to me for the Spellsinger series. These are the only books of his that I have read, and are probably the only books of his that I will read. I have no real interest in reading a novelisation of a film. I find most films that try to base themselves on books to be severely lacking, however I find that novels that are based on films are even more lacking. I generally do not like spin off series either (I do not believe I have ever read a Star Wars book).
This series is quite amusing, and in a way I related to Jon-Tom. There is a mix between him being a pre-Law student at college, working as a janitor so that he may pay his way through (though when I read this series I was still a teenager), but also being a struggling musician that suddenly comes good when he hits his big break, which is not so much in this world, but rather in the world ruled by talking animals.
Apparently there are a few continuity problems with this series, however it has been such a long time since I read them that they really don't stick in my mind. Further, I was enthralled with the character of Jon-Tom, and pretty much read the six books that had been written at the time. Foster has now written another two, however I have moved on from pulp fantasy (which is basically what this series is) so I really have no interested in returning to them. -
Wow... its been a LONG time since these were published - '83 and '84 (so if you are under 35, these count as "before you were born"!), and I cant believe that it hasn't got a lot more hype around r/Fantasy... These were an awesome read!
This is basically a single story split over two books... so you need to get the pair of them to get the whole story - but damn it is worth it! At first whiff it seems Mr Foster has done the classic fantasy trope of "chosen one" to vanquish the big bad evil, but this whole story is a happy subversion of most fantasy tropes!
Our main PoV character is Jonathan Thomas Meriweather - a pre-law student who is a bit of a stoner and amateur musician... and he finds himself drawn into a strange fantasy world populated by anthropomorphic animals... about to be invaded by the "plated folk" who have a new evil magic brought across from our world...
The setup and antics of the book are quite funny as it is a contrast of a "fantasy world" but the main character (and general tone) is straight up realistic... so the lack of plumbing, technology, social mores etc are played straight... and our poor PoV Jon-Tom has a really hard time of it. Mr Foster plays with the "chosen one" in that the wizard Clothahump was searching out for a magician of our world - an En'giniear - and Jon-Tom as a part time job at the university as a janitor (sanitation engineer...) I love that Jon-Tom is just your average university student... and really has no useful skills for a medieval-style world - in fact he is almost killed numerous time and desperately wants to get home! The only "skill" he finds by accident is that his music acts as a magical focus... he summons magical effects based on the song he sings... given that he only really knows a bunch of rock/jazz from the 60's and 70's - and that the magic tries to interpret the song based on the surroundings - the effects are usually quite different from expectations!
I loved his attempt to summon riding water-salamanders by singing "yellow submarine" by the Beatles... his companions get worried by the lyrics - rightfully so when he summons a river-dragon big enough to eat them all whole!
Given that Clothahump the wizard summoned Jon-Tom to counter an evil invasion... and cannot cast such a taxing spell for a long time - Jon-Tom gets dragged along for the ride of going to warn the inhabitants of the capital city... and then on a mad treck to gain allies (of sentient spiders!!!) and infiltrate the Plated folk country to try to stop the evil magics from our world... a military computer ala war-games
This reminds me of Discworld actually - using a fantasy world to comment on and satirize many real-world issues.
Definitely get this book and read it! -
The following summary was taken from the TV Tropes Wiki entry on the Spellsinger series, and slightly modified.
"The Spellsinger series is a fantasy series written by Alan Dean Foster, which has been described on this wiki's This Is Your Premise On Drugs page as "Narnia on an unholy combination of pot and Viagra".
In the first book, Spellsinger, the hero Jonathan Thomas Meriweather, also known as Jon-Tom, is a prelaw student with pretentions to rock stardom, who is innocently smoking pot when he's abruptly transported from the University of California at Los Angeles to a weird world in which animals talk, wear clothing, and live alongside humans by the tortoise wizard Clothahump, who was searching for a great wizardly "En'geeniar" (meaning an engineer, as he was under the impression that this is the name our world gives to wizards). Unfortunately, he caught Jon-Tom, who works part-time as a janitor and on his pay stubs is called a "sanitation engineer".
It all works out for the best, though, as Jon-Tom soon discovers that in the magical world he has the power of a spellsinger; a wizard who can make powerful magic through music."
The first two books in the series: "Spellsinger" and "Hour of the Gate" deal with the crisis Clothahump summoned Jon-Tom to help him with. The remaining six books chronicle other random adventures of Jon-Tom and his larcenous sidekick Mudge the otter (who speaks with either a cockney or Austrailian accent). The second to last book in the series deals with their gangsta rapping children and is just as messed up as it sounds.
There is some inconsistency in later volumes of the series (for example, in Book One Clothahump tells Jon-Tom that cloven-footed mammals did not become sapient, yet in book three and on this is totally disregarded, also Jon-Tom's tells his son that you can only spellsing with a duar even though this "fact" is contradicted twice. It would appear that any instrument will do). I wouldn't take it too seriously, though. This series is best read for fun and relaxation. Brain candy at its finest with a slight amount of nutritional value.
Oh, while we're on the subject of TV Tropes... the Spellsinger entry can be found here:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php...
Yes, I'm a trope whore. -
A ripping good fantasy, complete with dimensionally displaced human, wise turtle, wisecracking otter and Marxist dragon. Also a fair bit of testosterone, with the two female characters described as fiery beauties. The biggest problem with the book it stops well short of the end of the story, which continues in the next book. Not satisfying.
First read this book and it's sequel when they were written, back in the early 80s. I don't remember how the second book ended, but I'm fairly sure the third wasn't available at the time, and I read no further. The first six books were published over three years, so Alan Dean Foster was really cranking them out. He published two more in the early 90s. -
That wasn't bad. It takes your standard person from Earth gets pulled to fantasy land, adds a heaping helping of talking animals, sprinkles a touch of absurdity (with a Marxist dragon), and bakes the way that only 80s fantasy can.
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1984 grade B
2004 grade B+
Series book SS1 -
A light easy to read fantasy adventure. With sentient animals, groovy magic, and college students this book an enjoyable ride.
