The Soprano Sorceress

"The first book in the Spellsong Cycle, focusing on Anna Marshall, an Iowa music instructor magically transported to the world of Erde. On Erde, song is magic, making Anna a uniquely powerful sorceress. She must learn to use this power to survive in a dangerous new land." I liked the uniqueness of magic being dependent on well-performed, novel, and appropriate music. It was cool to have strong female person, and a slightly older one, be the protagonist in a world with a bunch of dudes in power. Still kind of draggy and the poverty/mysogeny was kind of wearing. Also not really a fan of our universe and a fantasy universe coexisting.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading a fantasy where the main character is a middle aged woman, however I only gave this 3 1/2 stars because there wasn't any deep message for me...beyond 'better watch what you wish for'. I enjoyed how she was able to transfer her skills in managing work politics into understanding & managing the rulers in the new world she is transported to. I also think it is regretful that she is spelled with youth and beauty. She could have been just as effective a character if she had been left her own age, tho I can see that it did give Modesitt the chance to comment on social expectations of beauty vs ability.
It also amazes me that for someone who has been a singer the only songs she can remember enough of the melody and show more words to adapt for magic are mainly childhood rhymes. It was finally mentioned that the strophic meter was most effective for magic--would have been better to state that earilier. show less

L. E. Modesitt is recognized in many circles as a master at combining hard science with a great story. In the Spellsong Cycle, Modesitt shows that he can also integrate the worlds of fantasy and music as well.

In Shadowsinger, music teacher Anna is translated from mundane Iowa to a world where sorcery exists, and music is the form that provides the magic. Modesitt does a more than capable job of merging music with the expected elements of a fantasy/sorcery tale. The characters are recognizable and follow expected paths. Modesitt doesn't paint a world with the details of a Tolkein or Jordan, instead focusing on the characters and their interactions with each other.

The first novel of the Spellsong Cycle is an easy read and a welcome way to show more spend a lazy afternoon. The book reads faster than many, in part because of the lack of extraneous detail, and in part because it truly is a good story. show less

a middle aged soprano is transported to a world where magic is invoked through song. Has great power. However, she spends so much time wishing and complaining that it got on my nerves. The idea is interesting, but once again, Modesitt falls back on certain character types who act and re-act like they are on a string.

This is the first book in Modesitt's series, The Spellsong Cycle, about a singer from our world who is inadvertantly dragged into another world where singing controls magic.

I really liked the idea behind this book, and the basic story was good - I wanted to see how it ended. Unfortunately, it wasn't very well written. There were both spelling and grammer errors throughout that were more than just poor proofreading. The parts form the heroine's point of view were written in the third person, but the sections referring to inhabitants of that world were in the first person, which I found very distracting and irritating, pareticularly because they were typically only a page or two long and thrown in at random so you never had a chance to show more get used to the style. Not to mention that they seemed at times rather irrelevant and unnecessarily confusing to the story.

In general, I felt the narrative lacked depth and body to it - a lot of the book seemed very sparse and thin, like nothing was happening most of the time with speech just thrown in here and there. It's hard to describe - I think perhaps it just needed more description and in particular more character development. The heroine, Anna, was fairly well developed, but pretty much everyone else was very two dimensional or lacked a purpose completely. I felt this was particularly true of the character Daffyd, who should have been one of the main characters throughout the book yet didn't seem to have much purpose - he just seemed to trail along.

It would have benfited, too, from more background and/or explaination of the rules and structure of the magic in the world and the circumstances of her travel between the worlds. Generally there was a lot of background detail that was not investigated which could and perhaps should have been to give the book more grounding and a feeling of reality.

But despite this, I was caught up by the actual story which had a lot of potential. I wouldn't, however, choose to read any more in the series (or anything else by the same author). It was perfectly adequate as a standalone story, with no cliffhangers to entice you to read any further. show less

An enjoyable read, I don't like this series as much as his Recluse series. I bought & kept all the books & have read them twice, though.

SPELLSONG CYCLE