Song Quest: The Echorium Sequence - Softcover

Roberts, Katherine

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0439338921 ISBN 13: 9780439338929

Publisher: Chicken House, 2002

Synopsis

At the Echorium on the Isle of Echoes, where the Singers use the five Songs of Power to heal and bring laughter, fear, pain, and death, Rialle, a novice who can understand the songs of the part-human, part-fish merlee, is chosen to accompany an expedition to the mainland. Reprint.

About this title

Review

SongQuest is an excellent adventure-quest, rich in powerful description and invention. Like Harry Potter, it is based in a school--a school for Singers, children who are learning to command songs which can control thought. The different kinds of songs are powerful tools for good in the right hands but can be deadly dangerous when misused: challa the dream song, soothing and healing as people sleep; kashe, for healing through laughter; shi, a song of pain, for healing through tears; aushan, a scary song that brings life to inner fears; and yehn, most frightening of all and very rarely to be used, which closes doors in the head leading to a kind of living death. In their final year of training, three children Rialle, Frenn and Kherron get caught up in the brutal battle between the forces of good from their home, the Isle of Echoes, and the evil wielded by the Kingdom of the Karch. Each must use their particular skills to save the half creatures, the merlee and the quetzal, who are being ruthlessly slaughtered by the Karch. Rialle has the true Singer's gift for both singing and listening but Frenn and Kherron each have a special part to play, too.

SongQuest is the first of what promises to be an absorbing fantasy sequence which satisfies on many levels. (Ages 10-12 years) --Julia Eccleshare

From the Author

Song Quest has a future!
Song Quest is my first novel. It grew from two short stories published in two different fantasy magazines that between them demanded to be a longer story... One was about the half-human, half-fish MERLEE whose songs had power over the wind and waves; the other created the PENTANGLE and the ECHORIUM (although I didn't know what the bluestone building where Singers lived was going to be called back then!) I was lucky enough to find an editor called Barry Cunningham who also thought these stories should be a book, and Song Quest was the result. When we won the Branford Boase Award in June 2000 for Best First Children's Novel, it was wonderful to know that other people, too, thought the story deserved to live. But we didn't stop there!

Fans of Song Quest might be interested to know that I have already written CRYSTAL MASK, the second book in the sequence, and that there will be a third just as soon as I get back to my "real-work" computer. All the Echorium books will be published by Barry Cunningham's new company Chicken House, since Element are now sadly out of business. This means that those of you who have been looking for Song Quest on this site should soon be able to find it... watch this space!

Edition details

• Publisher: Chicken House
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0439338921
• ISBN 13: 9780439338929
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 271