Music to My Sorrow (2005)

baen ebook

I'm trying to remember if I liked anything about this book. The characters are flat (everyone is pure good or evil, and of course all evil characters hang out with one another), people act stupid to advance the plot, the portrayal of religion is about as nuanced as being smashed in the head with a brick by an atheist, the central showdown is contrived and uninteresting. I wish I could expunge reading this book from my life.

Eric Banyon, Bard and freelance music teacher, managed to escape from his parents after a prolonged struggle under the threat of institutionalization. Now he's faced with the task of keeping younger brother Magnus out of their greedy clutches. A good attorney should have been enough to do the trick, but unfortunately Eric's parents have found themselves a holyroller with faerie backing. Now, not only Eric and Magnus's lives are at stake.

It's been quite a while since I read the earlier books in this series, but there was just enough backstory to make things understandable. Good action, and enough suspense to make the exact outcome uncertain to the last. ( )

(Amy) Right. So, I know there are people who will look upon me with scorn for this, but I really like Mercedes Lackey books. By no possible definition are they Great Litrachur, but they are a) consistently entertaining (with a very, very few exceptions in a huge number of books) and b) undemanding, and thereby great for times when the brain is tired or when one needs a book that can be read in small bits rather than requiring large spans of time. And therefore, very nearly every time a Lackey book comes out in paperback, it finds its way onto our shelves.

Given the undemanding nature of the book in general, I honestly don't know how much I have to say about it. It is the latest installment of the story of Eric Banyon, which begins with Knight of Ghosts & Shadows, regarding a modern Bard and his discovery and development of his power. It could be - and should be - pure cheese all the way through, but somehow I find it works for me, though I do confess I liked the first couple of books in the series (before it got brought forward into the 2000s from its 1980s origin) best.

However, brief plot sketch: Eric is trying to adopt his brother to protect him from their manipulative parents. Said parents recruit an ally to the cause of getting him back, but end up getting a bit more than they bargained for - deals made, howsoever unwittingly, with Unseighlie Sidhe almost never end well. Combine this with Ace's continuing battle for freedom from her televangelist father and, well, this book manages to skate right up against that line that this particular author has crossed a few times in writing her Message Fiction - her "abused children" obsession can often shine through rather more strongly than is likely to be particularly effective. This stays - barely - on the not-annoying side of that, though, or at least I thought so.

Anyway. I'm not going to recommend this book, despite having enjoyed it, because if you don't already like Mercedes Lackey, you'll either hate or just be confused by the book, and if you do, you don't need me to recommend it.
( http://weblog.siliconcerebrate.com/zenos-library/2008/02/music-to-my-sorrow-merc... )

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