The Singer and the Sea

The Winter of the World #5

by Michael Scott Rohan

Gille Kilmarsson is a mastersmith and musician in a quiet northern town. But he yearns for something more. When he saves a Southern merchant ship from the savagery of the corsairs, he takes as his only reward an old musical instrument. And his life changes forever.
For the instrument has an ancient, magical past and it soon leads Gille and his companion, Olvar, on an amazing voyage of adventure and discovery. A voyage in which they must confront not only the mysteries of the sea but also a ruthless, barbaric tribe intent on massacring an ancient people fleeing the encroachment of the restless Ice...

Genres: Fantasy, Fiction, Epic Fantasy, Science Fiction Fantasy

419 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published August 5, 1999

About the author

Michael Scott Rohan (born 1951 in Edinburgh) was a Scottish fantasy and science fiction author and writer on opera.

He had a number of short stories published before his first books, the science fiction novel Run to the Stars and the non-fiction First Byte. He then collaborated with Allan J. Scott on the nonfiction The Hammer and The Cross (an account of Christianity arriving in Viking lands, not to be confused with Harry Harrison's similarly themed novel trilogy of the same name) and the fantasy novels The Ice King and A Spell of Empire.

Rohan is best known for the Ice Age-set trilogy The Winter of the World. He also wrote the Spiral novels, in which our world is the Hub, or Core, of a spiral of mythic and legendary versions of familiar cities, countries and continents.

In the "Author's Note" to The Lord of Middle Air, Rohan asserts that he and Walter Scott have a common ancestor in Michael Scot, who is a character in the novel.

[copied and adapted from en.wikipedia.org]

Reviews

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the weakest of the MSR Winter of the World novels, although it is important in the mythology of the Chronicles.

I found Gille, one of the two main protagonists extremely irritating and cringingly embarrassing at time and wondered why he'd been given so much attention by the Powers.

There's a lot of time spent at sea, I've never really been a fan of maritime fantasy so I found this quite boring.

The one bright spot is that Olvar gets a look in towards the end of the story, and finally finds a woman who can match him.

[Ben · Rating 3 out of 5]

Focusing on two (but mostly one) of the characters from The Castle of the Winds we get a very focused seafaring adventure story set around a very limited set of events. It is largely for this reason, as well as some erratic point of view switching, that this book feels rather weaker than its predecessor - and much more so than the original trilogy. However, it ties well into the previous book and the previous book in particular, and adds new things to the world, giving us glimpses of things not seen before, or new perspectives on things we have. In particular there is a deeper insight into the culture and history of the setting, and a further exploration on the nature of the Powers.

The imagery is bright and colourful and while the main characters do not exactly stand out as shining icons, they do feel very human and quite real and I felt a certain satisfaction in seeing their growth over the course of the book. However, the action is curiously sedate for such a grand setting. It would be easy to sum up the entire story in two or three short sentences and not feel that anything of great importance had been left out of the plot. The strengths of the book are rather in other areas; the lore of the world, and the development of the characters.

I would be hard pressed to recommend this to anyone who was not already a Rohan fan, and even then it really just an ancillary text to his much greater saga.

[AyesalyaM · Rating 5 out of 5]

this author is exceptionally great, is very well-writen book.

[Ray · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Singer and the Sea Review

I got bored really quickly, like in the first chapter. Didn’t finish the book. There are better things to read.

[David Newell · Rating 3 out of 5]

While a strong book, and a good addition to the world lore, the actual plot and characters are pretty weak.

Entertaining, but definitely the weakest Rohan book I've read so far