Songs of the Earth: A Book Worth a Second Chance

-
Beaten to a pulp, only able to stand by sheer will power, Gair faces his accuser, the church, the very institution he had served as a Knight for the last ten years.  His crime?  Witchcraft.  The problem?  He didn't plan to use magic, the song of the earth found him at age eleven.  Once he experienced the thrill of the song, he couldn't ignore it even though his upbringing taught him of its evil.  And The  Book of Eador leaves no doubt to his penalty:  Suffer ye not the life of a witch.

Forces beyond Gair's understanding are at work, though, and the Preceptor sentences him to branding as a witch and orders him to leave the city gates before sundown never to return.

Did I mention he was beaten to a pulp and unable to stand?  Then, of course, there's the branding that came next.  Sundown approaches, and a mysterious stranger takes Gair under wing.  As an angry Elder pursues Gair determined to carry out a sentence of death, the stranger helps Gair escape the city.

What follows is an entertaining voyage across many leagues while Gair learns about the song and begins to recognize its beauty rather than its taint.  His ability is strong, stronger than the stranger has seen in years, and it attracts notice, good and bad, catapulting Gair to the forefront of a world about to be torn by war.

When I first heard about Elspeth Cooper's first novel, Songs of the Earth, I counted the days until its release.  Her book trailer hooked me before the book hit the shelves.  When the book came out, I downloaded it and began to read.  After the first few chapters, I stopped, disappointed in Ms. Cooper's first efforts.  Thanks to Worlds Without End 2013 Women of Genre Fiction Reading Challenge, I gave the book another chance.

What stopped me the first time? Just a few chapters in, I stood with Gair as soldiers and the Elder's witchfinder surrounded him.  No way out.  I turned the page, and ... no Gair.  A new person emerged with a story far less exciting than Gair's predicament.  This was the second time a point of view change had thrown me out of the story.  The first one came in the first chapter as the mysterious stranger observes from somewhere secret (!?) the sentencing of Gair.  Later, we learn this person's gender and name, but we spent half a chapter unsure who he was. Yes, it's a first book, and yes, one of the cornerstones of epic fantasy is the changing point of view.  But, the shifts jarred me, and not in a good way.  So, I stopped reading.

I'm VERY glad I picked Songs of the Earth up again.

On my second attempt to read Songs of the Earth, I knew what to expect, so I no longer felt the cold water shock of a new storyline.  As in all epic fantasies, during the climax of the book, Cooper draws these story lines together, but her first efforts at weaving these people into the narrative felt clunky.  Later, she managed the transitions better.

The voice and plot draws you in, allowing me to forgive gaps that needed development.  For example, why did Gair stop hearing the song for a while?  He never asks, but it comes back and that's that?  Also, during his testing, we discover a talent of his that he's know about all along.  Not only does he demonstrate it, but we get nothing from his internal thoughts to let us know he's never shown this to anyone before.  Just another line or two from him would have made this event clear to us and shown us its significance.

Cooper's first novel provides a compelling read.  Once I got beyond the early chapters, I enjoyed it and wanted to keep reading in spite of the gaps in development.  I will read the next book, Trinity Rising, which Cooper describes as much darker than the first.  All in all, I believe she has a good series developing, and I look forward to following her development as a writer.

I give this book 3.5 STARS out of 5 due to development issues, but I still recommend it to anyone who enjoys epic fantasy.

Comments

Michael Offutt, Phantom Reader said…
Great review. Thanks for telling me about it.
February 26, 2013 at 2:46 PM
Barbara V. Evers said…
Michael. No problem. Hope you enjoy reading it.
February 26, 2013 at 8:42 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Skin Tone: Describing Your Characters

-
Image
When you write about character's of different races, how do you describe their skin tone? If you've never thought about this, then consider this question: How do the authors you read described persons of color? A few months ago, I attended a webinar about writing diverse characters. The guest was Eliana West of Writers for Diversity . The information she shared felt fresh and valuable, especially related to describing a character's skin tone. I get really tired of seeing African-descended characters described in terms of the goods that drove, and still drive the slave trade--coffee, chocolate, brown sugar. There's some weird psychosocial baggage attached to that.    -- N. K. Jemisin As this quote from author, N. K . Jemisin , indicates, historically, writers have described people of color using food-related descriptors. Many people of color find this offensive. This surprised me, at first, but she has a point, especially when you view it through the quote above. My fir...
Read more

Character Development: Using the Johari Window

-
Image
In my last post, Character Development: the Johari Window , I introduced the Johari Window as a tool for developing your characters. It's important that your character not know everything about their situation. These unknowns can lead to an intriguing story and create possibilities for conflict within the story. How do you use the Johari Window? In this post, I thought I'd provide a simple example of the Johari Window with a character most people know:  Harry Potter. Below, I have filled out the Johari Window as it might appear within the first few pages of book 1, Harry Potter and The Sorceror's Stone . The Johari Window based on Harry Potter and The Sorceror's Stone Three of the quadrants in this window reveal what Harry doesn't know about who he truly is and what happened to his parents. I could add a lot to the quadrants representing what he doesn't know, but I hope this gives you an idea on how a Johari Window might be used. What do you d...
Read more

He Said, She Said, Who Said? Punctuating Dialogue

-
Image
Courtesy of Morguefile.com I've been focusing my posts on workshops and panels I taught or participated on at the Imaginarium Convention. Although this serves as a poor substitute for the real thing, I can share some highlights. This week, we're going to explore dialogue punctuation. The first thing writers need to learn is how to properly punctuate dialogue. I've discovered, over the years, that many don't know how. Notice in the first example below, the dialogue starts at the beginning of the sentence, and the speaking tag (he said, she said, Paul said, etc.) follows it.  A few points to notice: The first letter of the quotation is capitalized. What the person says is a sentence, so it must be capitalized. A comma comes directly after the quote and INSIDE the quotation marks. You can, also, have a question mark or exclamation point here. There is a space AFTER the closing quotation mark followed by the speaking tag and a period at the end of the sentence. In the next ...
Read more