Main character can't bein her field, ragequits afteryears of training despite infinite other career possibilities in the field
Chapter: Main character physically restrained by stranger, thinks it's not yet time to call for help despite help being readily available because she's apparently somehow not technically in "personalliberty infringement" zone yet
Me: Nope I could never carry a tune, but that in no way ever deterred me from playing “Crystal Singer” with my other precociously adult bookreading childhood friend.
Like a lot of Anne McCaffrey books, I'd read this before, Aboutyears ago. How perspectives change. At the time, I loved it and would've given itstars, Now, unfortunately, it just didn't stack up for me, Killashandra was an unlikeable character self centred, Very quick to judge. Judged others for being parochial and naive when she'd hardly traveled or done anything exceptional, In fact, before becoming a crystal singer, she'd never left her home planet before, What cheek! Had an annoying habit of comparing some of the men she encountered with her music maestro, Felt like telling her to get a life,
My memory must be failing too, I seemed to remember lots more crystal singing when I'd read it earlier, The reality was somewhat different, She only really had one experience with cutting real crystal herself in the mountains, I would've loved to read more about that, Wasn't that the title of the book afterall
In terms of characters, apart from the Guild Master, all the others were one dimensional, In fact, the Guild Master wasn't very likeable either,
Jeeze I sound harsh and I really admire and respect McCaffrey too, This is just not one of her best, I might revisit the smallest dragon rider or some of her other Pern novels to wipe the taste from my mouth, The Good: The late great Anne McCaffrey had a wonderful way with words, as is evident here, Crisp writing and lots of details took me to another galaxy without leaving my chair, Killashandra was a likable heroine despite dire circumstances, she refused to give up, and overcame her shattered longtime dream,
The Bad: Unfortunately, Ms, McCaffrey also decided to include some bedroom scenes which include sexual details that smack of a trashy paperback romance at times, Those who are sensitive to such content should avoid this, This book is one of my old favorites from when I was first discovering Science Fiction back in my teenaged years, Back in the day, when scifi covered ALL types of fiction that were not mainstream,
This is a book I have reread so often over the years and yet it never grows old for me, I has, most definitely, dated somewhat but I think that in many small areas this has good predicative elements, such as the use of voice recording with voice locks, personal recorders, the use of the computer systems in the sorting areas all things that were not around when the book was written.
Killashandra herself is a very dramatic often melodramatic character, She is one of the stronger women that I had read at the time the book was written and as a teenager I loved her degree of self autonomy and lack of self doubt.
Having a main woman character who is not in any way depicted as a carer, nurturer or someone who is sensitive to every one elses needs that was quite an exceptional heroin in the day.
It charmed me back then, even now while I see Killashandra as quite young, I still enjoy the strength of her character,
It is a fun adventure, very much of a type our main heroine travels across the universe to join a small, unique and influential yet slightly sinister group.
The Guild is about cutting crystals that are unique to their planet of origin and in order to live on that planet one must form a symbiotic relationship with a spore in the atmosphere.
I always have loved the detail and the complexity that went into the construction of Ballybran and the Guild, I think McCaffrey did a superb job of inserting the information into the story and the journey of Killashandra becoming a crystal singer.
My wife is an avid fan of McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern series, so wanted me to read this one to her because of the author she enjoys being read to aloud, as well as reading by herself but neither of us liked this particular book, nor wanted to pursue the rest of the series after finishing it.
Killashandra is far too selfcentered to be a very appealing or involving character, And while the use of a symbiotic relationship, with psi features, between a human and an alien life form is characteristic of McCaffrey's fiction, the bond between the "crystal singers" and their crystals unlike the one between Pernese dragonriders and their dragons is ultimately destructive of the former's sanity, which gives the book a depressing feel.
I forgot to update GR when I finished this one! Lol! Oh well quite enjoyed reading this tome and quite looking forward to the next one! Crystals crystals crystals! I don't know why but I see tragedy on the horizon.
. . I always expect it when characters are longlived, Huhu.
First finished:dec
Source: Bookdepository birthday gift from Cel! ty! This book sucks you in with a compelling protagonist, who is given an unfair hardship in life and strives to overcome it.
It then introduces a new job for her that she is warned against, as it is incredibly dangerous and life altering, She is told of the dangers again and again, and bravely accepts these challenges,
And then she goes on to experience none of them, This is what's so bothersome about the book to me, To live in the new planet's biome she must first become acclimated to a symbiotic spore of some sort, She is warned that this process may kill her, if it takes at all, and afterwards she will never be the same, Some who were affected by it go blind or deaf, or become deformed in some way, Some can never leave the planet again because they will die from withdrawal, And the body is ravaged by illness for weeks, Well, none of this happens to her, She just wakes up one day and her 'handicap' is that her senses are heightened, That's it.
Also, singing crystal the profession in this book that can only be done by the super special and talented makes you really, really sleepy and really, really hungry, I know because half this book is about her eating or feeling tired, or having sex with some random guy who she holds no emotional attachment to,
I also thought it was wierd that one of the characters was mean, because she thought the spore wouldn't take, and she'd just die anyway, so everyone hated her.
Then the spore wouldn't take and she died, Apparently because she 'didn't want it enough', What the hell was that about
Not a bad book I'd give it more of a,if i could, but the main character just isn't compelling after a while, Its like halfway through you go, I get it, nothing bad can happen to the main character, so your brain just starts falling asleep, There's no tension! Pure unadulterated entertainment and pretty good entertainment at that, Killashandra Ree is a rather selfcentered, intelligent, young woman, She's told that, afterlong years of study, that she will never be a soloist because she has a burr in her voice in the higher octaves, Killa is not going to be any other type of singer so she quits school and decides to leave her planet, While at the spaceport she encounters an "older" man Carrick, who just happens to be a crystal singer who saves the port from destruction, He induces Killa to enjoy the generosity of the port officials with him and then to travel around her planet with him, When he describes what a crystal singer is, she decides she wants to be one, And after a few weeks of decadence, Carrick informs her he must return to his planet, called Ballybran, He tries to dissuade her from coming but doesn't work, At the spaceport, as they are delayed because Killa's teacher and school have alerted local authorities about her, another shuttle goes haywire but this time Carrick is too weak and he collapses and dies.
Killa escorts his body home, takes the tests, and is admitted to the guild that contains the crystal singers, Turns out Killa is a natural and sensitive to black crystal, which is the rarest and most desired of the crystal on the planet, The Master of the Guild takes her under his wing in more ways than one and she is soon cutting crystal and appreciating how addictive it is,
This is not a deep nor a complex book but it was fun, This book is part of an ongoing minor project of mine to read some SF/F books by women
that were written beforeor so, This one hails from.
Crystal Singer was originally four short stories, and while it comes together decently as a novel, it was easy to see the seams where the various plot arcs came and went.
The main thrust of the book is largely wish fulfillment, with our heroine Killashandra coming quickly, through a combination of natural talent and circumstance and with very little personal discomfort, into the highest ranks of the workers on Ballybran: the Crystal Singer.
A Singer cuts crystal from the earth that gets used in instantaneous interplanetary communication, among other things, Lucky Killashandra! Her selfconfidence is reinforced by the very universe around her,
Speaking of wish fulfillment, Killashandra never lacks for male companionship, Sexuality was an odd mix, On the one hand, you have Killashandra sleeping with a handful of men over the course of the book, everything being consensual in an easygoing way, On the other, men's interactions with Killashandra were on the paternalistic side, I couldn't count how many times men took her by the arm to steer her here or there, or called her "dear," or took charge of trivial matters that she could quite easily take care of herself.
Two different men end up shoving food in her mouth to make her eat, which I thought was kind of weird,
On language: "It would have taken a far more punctilious person, . . to depress his ingenuous manner" is a good example of McCaffrey's style in this novel, She's precise with her vocabulary the only times I ever tripped up were obvious typos or machinereader slipups, so she wasn't misusing long words in an attempt to look smart.
But while I got used to the prose, it always felt too clinical, too syllableinflated for the simple things it was expressing: fluff that reads like a legal document,
Weak characterization didn't help matters, Killashandra is all right, I supposeand shares my fondness for beer!but no one else has more than one simple personality trait: cheery, sneery, pushy, sweet, And some characters don't get even that, This was one of those books with a bunch of secondary characters that I had to search on Kindle to remember where I'd seen them before,
Ballybran was neat, though, The crystals are a fun and fanciful concept, and the descriptions of the landscape and the dangers of the planet were the most enjoyable parts of the novel for me.
That said, Ballybran's social structure was unconvincing, The population of the whole planet is quite small less than,, I think and the society has a guild setup where reward and punishment is meted out in debits and credits.
Commerce is great and all, but I doubt it could create a utopia where there's no need for justice, There was no mention of a security or police force, jails or courts,
Crystal Singer was interesting as an artifact of SF's history, but even as a light entertainment it fell short, .
Enjoy Crystal Singer (Crystal Singer, #1) Conceived By Anne McCaffrey Visible In Textbook
Anne McCaffrey