When things go horribly awry, I turn to THIS.
Hello my Children. A Bronchitis-infected Colleen speaking. Of COURSE I have Bronchitis, it only is fitting seeing as last week was the week from hell. It was so bad that I pulled out my literary version of a blankie: Rhapsody by Elizabeth Haydon. When things go completely in the shitter and I can no longer deal with the real world I enter Rhapsody's world, where music can pretty much do ANYTHING -kill, heal, bring a nation of demi-humans to heel, etc. So rather than reviewing last week's episode of Chuck, we will be entering this awesome fantasy world.
Rhapsody follows the titular character on her journey through the fantasy world that she lives in. She is a singer from an island called Serendair and is training to become a "Namer." Namers have the power to affect their world by using an object's true name. As she said in the book "there is no thing, no concept, no law as strong as the power of a given thing's name. Our identities are bound to it. It is the essence of what we are, our own individual story, and sometimes it can even make us what we are again, no matter how much we have been altered."
She proves this point fairly quickly in the novel when, fleeing the town guard, she runs into the single most dangerous assassin in Serendair. He is the Brother. And my favorite character in this book. He and his best buddy, Grunthor, are fleeing what is essentially a demon. This demon, bringing the whole name thing's point home, had taken prisoner the Brother's true name and as such is the demon's, Tsoltan, a F'dor (they are the big bad of this ENTIRE series), slave. Anyway, Rhapsody, in desperation, asks the Brother to adopt her for a moment, which he, though confused, agrees to this weird request. She turns to the town guard and says "Wow, what a coincidence you are here to meet my brother. Brother meet the town guard...Guard meet my brother -Achmed, the Snake." By this weird coincidence of accidentally using his real name she has renamed him Achmed. And freed him from metaphysical slavery.
Anyway, Achmed (as he will be called for the rest of the series) drags her across Serendair, to the great tree Sagia. In this series, there are five trees that exist where time began, or where each of the elements have their birth. He & Grunthor manage to tap into the root of Sagia and, dragging Rhapsody along with them, travel underneath the Earth along The Great Root or the Axis Mundi, across the planet. It apparently takes them 1500 or so years to do so. They also pass through the core of the planet and are remade by the fire there. Rhapsody sings to carry them through the fire. In doing so, she gives Grunthor the power of connecting to the Earth and Achmed the power of the "pathfinding." They manage to keep a huge dragon from hearing its name-song when the F'dor call it. The F'dor wish to return the whole of existence to the void and were going to use this captured and corrupted Wyrm to do so. Achmed learned of this plan while under the power of Tsoltan and wanted to stop it. So Rhapsody sang a song and wove it around the wyrm to block the call.
Anyway, eventually they reach the other side of the planet. Rhapsody finds a cool sword, which Achmed tells her is "Daystar Clarion." This sword will be more important in the later books but is simply a cool flaming sword that Rhapsody uses. Anyway, Grunthor digs them out of the Earth and they are finally back on the surface. There, they meet up with a bunch of people...most notably Llauron, the leader of a religion and protector of the Great White Tree. He tells them that Serendair was destroyed ala Atlantis 1400 years prior. They also learn that a whole mess of their countrymen left Serendair and colonized the land they are now in. Those dudes are called the Cymrians. As a result of passing from one point where time began, across the Prime Meridian and to another place where time began, Cymrians became immortal. The same happened to our intrepid trio and thus they are immortal too.
Anyway, they learn that the Cymrians seat of power was Canrif in the Manteid Mountains, now known as Firbolg territory. Back in the day, the Cymrian alliance was ruled by Gwylliam, last king of Serendair, and Anwyn, a half-dragon seer of the past. They eventually get into a domestic squabble that leads to 700 years of war. Destroys the alliance and a good deal of their civilization.
Anyway, Achmed and Grunthor are both part Firbolg so they decide to take over the mountain. No really. They take over the whole of the Firbolg clans and Achmed is made king. Rhapsody, who has adopted a teenager named Jo as her sister, helps out, fighting and singing and whatever else was needed. And they eventually meet up with a mysterious dude named Ashe. There's a big battle with a group of firbolg who are controlled by a Firbolg who has possession of an amulet wore by Tsoltan. It possessed the Firbolg but once he was killed, they realized that the F'dor itself was not possessing the Bolg. Oh and Ashe helps out with the fighting. Grunthor is nearly mortally wounded, but Rhapsody brings him back to life. Everything turns out fine and dandy. Except for the fact that somewhere out in this new world, there really is a F'dor, who has spent the last 300 years preparing for another huge war, which F'dor thrive on. And that's more or less it.
I highly recommend getting this book from your local bookstore or library or whatever. It and the five books that follow it: Prophesy, Destiny, Requiem for the Sun, Elegy for a Lost Star, and the Assassin King. I own all of them myself.
