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Marooned in another universe, a musician leads a motley army to save two worlds, in an entertaining tale by the #1 New York Times-bestselling author. Jon-Tom just wanted to go home. Trapped in a world where animals speak and magic is real, the American college student yearned for an ordinary dorm-room life. But here his music has magical power--even if he can't control it--which may be able to save the world from the army of the Plated Folk, whose sinister queen plans on killing and show more eating every warm-blooded mammal she can get her pincers on and taking over their lands. The great battle is coming, and Jon-Tom, whose posse includes a wizarding turtle, a cowardly bat, and an otter with a filthy mind, must raise an army to fight it. To find allies they must make an impossible journey, across mountains and rivers no one has ever passed before. Survival will be a miracle--but Jon-Tom is no ordinary musician. show lessTags
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Jon-Tom, a human college student trapped in a fantasy world, must lead a motley crew: the wizard Clothahump and Mudge the otter, to unite against an invasion of insectoid Plated Folk, using unpredictable musical magic to survive.
The second book in the spellsinger series picks up right from where it left off in Spellsinger. Its light, inoffensive fantasy fare and does what it is meant to do with a reasonable degree of competence. The prose is workmanlike but once in a while Foster is able to put together a scene or an image that really sticks with you, such as the web-like city of the spider-like creatures, the Weavers.
engaging characters exploring a (slightly) gritty anthropomorphic world. Main characters make your care about them and the accelerating pace of their quest is very easy to buy into.
I liked this one a lot less than the first book in the series. It just felt like an endless slog and the main character wasn't interesting enough to make up for it.
These were all fine, unmemorable but enjoyable books I devoured when I was 13 or so.
SPELLSINGER
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Genre Benders: Comic Fantasy
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music to my eyes
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Author Information
364+ Works 73,725 Members
Bestselling science fiction writer Alan Dean Foster was born in New York City in 1946, but raised mainly in California. He received a B.A. in Political Science from UCLA in 1968, and a M.F.A. in 1969. Foster enjoys traveling because it gives him opportunities to meet new people and explore new places and cultures. This interest is carried over to show more his writing, but with a twist: the new places encountered in his books are likely to be on another planet, and the people may belong to an alien race. Foster began his career as an author when a letter he sent to Arkham Collection was purchased by the editor and published in the magazine in 1968. His first novel, The Tar-Aiym Krang, introduced the Humanx Commonwealth, a galactic alliance between humans and an insectlike race called Thranx. Several other novels, including the Icerigger trilogy, are also set in the world of the Commonwealth. The Tar-Aiym Krang also marked the first appearance of Flinx, a young man with paranormal abilities, who reappears in other books, including Orphan Star, For Love of Mother-Not, and Flinx in Flux. Foster has also written The Damned series and the Spellsinger series, which includes The Hour of the Gate, The Moment of the Magician, The Paths of the Perambulator, and Son of Spellsinger, among others. Other books include novelizations of science fiction movies and television shows such as Star Trek, The Black Hole, Starman, Star Wars, and the Alien movies. Splinter of the Mind's Eye, a bestselling novel based on the Star Wars movies, received the Galaxy Award in 1979. The book Cyber Way won the Southwest Book Award for Fiction in 1990. His novel Our Lady of the Machine won him the UPC Award (Spain) in 1993. He also won the Ignotus Award (Spain) in 1994 and the Stannik Award (Russia) in 2000. He is the recipient of the Faust, the IAMTW Lifetime achievement award. Alan Dean Foster's Star Wars: The Force Awakens, was a 2015 New York Times bestseller. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- The Hour of the Gate
- Original publication date
- 1984-02
- People/Characters
- Aveticus (marten); Clothahump (turtle); Jon-Tom (Jonathan Thomas Meriweather); Mudge (otter); Pog (bat); Talea (show all 7); Wuckle Three-Stripe
- Dedication
- To the trio that never was But should have been.
Janis
Aretha
Billie
The ladies, bless 'em all. - First words
- Jon-Tom reeled dizzily at the top of the steps.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Leaving the two humans to their own destinies, and rising on suddenly massive wings, the golden phoenix raced for that distant cloud, the sun setting on its back like a rare jewel.
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- 1,117
- Popularity
- 22,595
- Reviews
- 6
- Rating
- (3.46)
- Languages
- English, Estonian, German, Russian
- Media
- Paper, Audiobook, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 22
- UPCs
- 1
- ASINs
- 12