Sing the Four Quarters by Tanya Huff
Sep. 18th, 2008 10:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snugglekittyI really like Tanya Huff. With that being said, this book was just bad.
In the land of Shkoder, bards don't just play music. They can Sing the kigh, magical spirits of nature that can make the crops grow, push a boat upstream, and many other skills that are useful to humans. Annice gave up everything to be a bard - all her wealth and status as a princess, not to mention the right to get married and have children, due to a royal decree from her overbearing brother. But a passionate encounter with the handsome but annoying Duc of Ohrid changes everything, and not for the better, when she finds she is carrying his child and he stands accused of treason to Shkoder.
This book basically seemed to me like a bad ripoff of Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar series. (It came out about seven years after Arrows of the Queen, the first book written in that series, was published.) The Bard and the Duc sniping at each other is annoying rather than funny. The role of the Bards in relation to the kingdom is never fully explained. What the kigh get out of their arrangement with the Bards is never fully explained. Overall, I just don't think it was very well-written. I like Huff's other fantasy better (such as Child of the Grove or The Fire's Stone). Two stars. Get it out of the library if you want it, and read it on a boring plane ride.
In the land of Shkoder, bards don't just play music. They can Sing the kigh, magical spirits of nature that can make the crops grow, push a boat upstream, and many other skills that are useful to humans. Annice gave up everything to be a bard - all her wealth and status as a princess, not to mention the right to get married and have children, due to a royal decree from her overbearing brother. But a passionate encounter with the handsome but annoying Duc of Ohrid changes everything, and not for the better, when she finds she is carrying his child and he stands accused of treason to Shkoder.
This book basically seemed to me like a bad ripoff of Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar series. (It came out about seven years after Arrows of the Queen, the first book written in that series, was published.) The Bard and the Duc sniping at each other is annoying rather than funny. The role of the Bards in relation to the kingdom is never fully explained. What the kigh get out of their arrangement with the Bards is never fully explained. Overall, I just don't think it was very well-written. I like Huff's other fantasy better (such as Child of the Grove or The Fire's Stone). Two stars. Get it out of the library if you want it, and read it on a boring plane ride.