Soul-Singer of Tyrnos by Ardath Mayhar

~The Quick Take~

This quick read relies on classic fantasy tropes and scratches that fantasy itch without roping you into a vast series or using cheap tricks to hook you or exaggerated human emotion to make you feel things. While dated by modern standards, it was a good read.

Fair warning, while nothing graphic happens on screen, rape and sexual abuse of children do show up in the story, completely out of the blue.

~The Real Review ~

Soul-Singer of Tyrnos follows a young Singer as she leaves her teachers and emerges into the world for the first time. Following the path the gods put before her, she must sing the souls of the people of Tyrnos, that she might ease ailments and expose corruption.

The Singer—who technically has a name but doesn’t use it as a form of humility—is a capable young woman, strong but not outlandish, kind, and driven. She’s a good protagonist.

In time she’s joined by the other characters on the cover: the Winter Beast and Lisaux. They make great secondary characters, and are similar to the Singer in their goodness, their strength, and their general likability. I especially appreciated the depiction of Lisaux; he works so well with the Singer and clearly views her and the Winter Beast as equals.

The magic system, as I mentioned, involves singing. I enjoyed this unique form of magic, but with this being an older book, there wasn’t much time devoted to explaining it. This was a problem when the Singer started doing unexpected things with her power. I wondered: is this convenient writing hiding a multitude of plotting sins, or was this in Mayhar’s mind from the very beginning? It’s impossible to say.

In some ways Soul-Singer of Tyrnos reminded me of the classic chosen-one quest novels. The Singer must travel far and interact with many different, and sometimes strange, beings in her path as the gods’ instrument of justice. I caught whiffs of books like David Eddings’ wrote, and I could totally see an author in the early 1980s reading this book and thinking “it could be more—longer, a whole series even, with more details, more characters, more time getting to know the world and its inhabitants.”

As such, in addition to enjoying the characters, I enjoyed Soul-Singer of Tyrnos from an academic viewpoint. It felt a bit like getting a secret look at a prototype from yesteryear.

I was excited to like this book because the last Ardath Mayhar novel I tried to read—Lords of the Triple Moons—fell far short of expectations due to all the excitement being stuffed into scene breaks. Soul-Singer of Tyrnos didn’t entirely avoid this problem, but it only happened once, and without great affect on the story. Thus, I pushed past it.

Soul-Singer of Tyrnos falls perfectly into that rare list of books that are good without being great, enjoyable without being particularly engaging, and well-written without being beautifully written. Honestly, in our current turbulent times, it was kind of perfect as an easy, low-key distraction that didn’t try to make me feel feelings.

Public Goodreads Deets: 3.71/5 average | 28 ratings

Cover art by Steve Hickman: