Jillian H. reviewed on 7/6/2007 + 5 more book reviews

Helpful Score: 4

The draw to this book is the world she creates, with the spirits controlled by gifted musicians. This world is intriguing and expertly drawn, and almost makes you want to buy the sequel.

But the problems in the story are fairly simple; the charecters rather flat. Everyone is a good guy, a nice person, except for a few sideline charecters - a village yokel, a ambitious soldier, and a bizzare sadistic aunt, who takes the fall for being a bad guy. Everyone else (all the main charecters) are accepting, wise, kind, loving, ect. The crisis in the story is wrapped up in by the god in the machine, as it were, the sub problems are all wrapped up nicely and neatly. As I said, it all falls rather flat.

There is a disturbing mention of incest with one of our main charecters, mentioned in an aside as if it weren't of notice; and almost all the charecters are bi-sexual, which was a bit bizarre. In fact, the whole book seems to be some propaganda for ACCEPTANCE and TOLERANCE. "Accept me as I am", screams at you like a elementary school poster - so much so that you think the author doubted our intelligence and capacity to get the message.

But the world itself kept itself in my memory for eight years, so much so I had to seek it out to read it again. Worth the read, if you're not too picky about well developed plots and 3D charecters, and as long as you can handle the moral ambiguities in the text.

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