- Paperback: 352 pages
- Publisher: Weidenfeld Military (15 April 1996)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1857984226
- ISBN-13: 978-1857984224
- Product Dimensions: 23.1 x 15.2 x 2.5 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 2,053,529 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
Orial lives quietly with her father in the grounds of their sanitorium, secretly acting out a forbidden ritual in her mother's memorial in the necropolis. But Orial does not know that her mother was not of this world and she may have inherited the talent that killed her mother.
About the Author
Sarah Ash studied music at Cambridge University and trained as a composer before she found her real metier in words. She now lives and works in Beckenham, Kent.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Songspinners is to be recommended to any lover of fantasy novels. I came to Sarah Ash's work having read only children's fantasy, with no experience of fantasy writing for adults, and I was very pleasantly surprised by just how much of a compulsive read it was. It combines the imagination of children's fantasy with the adult themes of intolerance, death, love and sex, it tells a fascinating and compulsive story and couches it all in rich and beautiful language.
Format:Paperback
This is a pleasant fantasy novel, fresh in setting though not in plot. The main character is engaging: a plucky young woman. The setting has a number of original, vaguely European details. The love of music, pleasant characters and a well-described world make for a pleasing book.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
2 reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Some lovely ideas
28 July 2003
Format:Paperback
Songspinners is the story of Orial, a young woman forbidden any music because of her father's fears of the harm it might do her. But when Orial pursues a study of music in secret, manifesting an astonishing talent, and then discovers a brilliant composer fleeing religious repression in a neighbouring country, a series of events is set in motion that will change her life forever - and the lives of many others - if she can survive long enough.
I thought I should put in a brief synopsis, as no editorial reviews of "Songspinners" seem to have found their way onto this site. There's a lot to like in this book. A number of the characters are appealing or at least amusing; their varying motivations are believable and fit well into the story. Ash has a good gift for visual description, and the accounts of the Undercity and polite society in Sulien (think eighteenth-century Bath in England) are beautifully brought to life. There are secrets to be uncovered, something I always like in a book, and the resolution of the story was appropriate.
Yet I would have liked to like "Songspinners" more than I actually did. Like "Moths to a Flame", it just all felt very thin, somehow . . . I find it difficult to identify just what I felt was missing - real depth of character and setting, perhaps?
I assume this is one of Sarah Ash's earliest books. I hope her talent continues to develop from this promising beginning.
I thought I should put in a brief synopsis, as no editorial reviews of "Songspinners" seem to have found their way onto this site. There's a lot to like in this book. A number of the characters are appealing or at least amusing; their varying motivations are believable and fit well into the story. Ash has a good gift for visual description, and the accounts of the Undercity and polite society in Sulien (think eighteenth-century Bath in England) are beautifully brought to life. There are secrets to be uncovered, something I always like in a book, and the resolution of the story was appropriate.
Yet I would have liked to like "Songspinners" more than I actually did. Like "Moths to a Flame", it just all felt very thin, somehow . . . I find it difficult to identify just what I felt was missing - real depth of character and setting, perhaps?
I assume this is one of Sarah Ash's earliest books. I hope her talent continues to develop from this promising beginning.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Sarah Ash's best novel to-date
18 Feb 2008
Format:Paperback
"Songspinners" is a novel set against the epic backdrop of Sarah Ash's expanding fantasy world where her novels "Moths to a Flame", "The Lost Child" and The Tears of Artamon trilogy all take place.
The story is one of the entwined fates of three people: Orial Magelonne,a young woman with a musical heritage forbidden to her since her mother's mysterious death; Amaru Khassian, a crippled opera composer fleeing his country pursued by a fanatical religious order; and Acir Korentan, a soldier-priest of that very same religious order who must alternately hunt and protect the composer he is sent after. In the wake of a brewing revolution that crosses international borders and shakes the foundations and beliefs of two very different countries,the three must overcome their own prejudices and disabilites as they draw closer to the truth behind the ancient culture of Songspinners.
"Songspinners" is an epic of a stand alone book, wherein Sarah Ash wrangles a cast of interesting characters and creates entire mythologies, countries and cultures with ease. Her characters are by no means two dimensional human beings, and the subjects touched upon in the book are thought-provoking, vast, and socially relevant. "Songspinners" is Ash's second novel, and is a vast departure from her first novel "Moths to Flame" both stylistically and conceptually. There were no points in Songspinners when I was tempted to say "Well, I wish she would have done THIS instead..." as I said sometimes while reading "Moths to a Flame".
Personally, this is my favorite novel by Sarah Ash. "Songspinners" even overshadows her very popular Tears of Artamon Trilogy.
The story is one of the entwined fates of three people: Orial Magelonne,a young woman with a musical heritage forbidden to her since her mother's mysterious death; Amaru Khassian, a crippled opera composer fleeing his country pursued by a fanatical religious order; and Acir Korentan, a soldier-priest of that very same religious order who must alternately hunt and protect the composer he is sent after. In the wake of a brewing revolution that crosses international borders and shakes the foundations and beliefs of two very different countries,the three must overcome their own prejudices and disabilites as they draw closer to the truth behind the ancient culture of Songspinners.
"Songspinners" is an epic of a stand alone book, wherein Sarah Ash wrangles a cast of interesting characters and creates entire mythologies, countries and cultures with ease. Her characters are by no means two dimensional human beings, and the subjects touched upon in the book are thought-provoking, vast, and socially relevant. "Songspinners" is Ash's second novel, and is a vast departure from her first novel "Moths to Flame" both stylistically and conceptually. There were no points in Songspinners when I was tempted to say "Well, I wish she would have done THIS instead..." as I said sometimes while reading "Moths to a Flame".
Personally, this is my favorite novel by Sarah Ash. "Songspinners" even overshadows her very popular Tears of Artamon Trilogy.
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