Rating: 
Summary: Melodious Story
Review: I was hooked by the front art (very good one from Kuniko Y. Craft) but kinda hesitate because the story is about revenge (while I'm not looking to read about that!).But, finally I gave it a try and... first, the rythmic sentence carried me into the story, second the unique and mystery of each character haunted me, and third, the end was unpredictable (in a charming way)! Can't wait to read more of McKillips's. :)
Rating:
Summary: Song for the readers
Review: I'm obliged to begin by informing you that McKillip is my favorite author. So am I biased? Yes, but for a good reason. If you haven't read a book by her before, I wouldn't necessarily start with this one. It's a heady introduction to her elegant language, where words are like paints applied with the most delicate of brushes. I'd suggest _The Forgotten Beasts of Eld_ to start with. Instant love, I promise, if you're into lyrical high fantasy. For veterans of her work: you will not be disappointed. As always, McKillip twists love and loss together in a complex plot, although not one with incredible depth. The telling of the tale exceeds the tale itself--even while you're bewildered, you're lost in the atmosphere she so deftly creates. I was seized by the very first sentence and drawn on by her unique world and language. The end holds what was for me a pleasant surprise, but one that isn't a blatant deux ex machina. I personally believe she found a full and satisfying closure to it all. Her characters are richly, gravely compelling. And woven right beside is her delightful strand of subtle humor that never seems to jar with the somber, powerfully emotional parts of her story. I think I read her work as much to learn (I'm an aspirant writer) as to enjoy. As for the latter--I'm sure you will, too.
Rating:
Summary: Masterpiece of silken prose
Review: It's a too-rare gift to be able to write prose like poetry, but Patricia McKillip has mastered the art. It took me a while to get past the first few chapters, but then the plot caught up speed into a magical, political story about love, revenge, music and memory. A burned child with only vague memories of fire is brought to the bard's island of Luly, raised and marries there. Rook Caladrius and his wife have a son, Hollis, but the bards are slowly drifting from Luly to the mainland, Hollis among them. Caladrius stays where he is, until a young man named Griffin Tormalyne, one of the last of a great ruling house that was overthrown by the Basilisk, arrives seeking great power. Caladrius realizes that he cannot escape his shrouded past any longer, and sets off for the capitol city. Elsewhere, the magister Giulia Dulcet spends divided time between the Tormalyne music school, and the taverns where she plays the single-stringed picochet. But soon she is called away to teach one of the Basilisk's daughters (he has two: smoldering sorceress Luna Pellior and the less intelligent, rather ignored Lady Damiet). She is aided by the mysterious Caladrius, who helps to teach Damiet how to play the picochet and how to sing. Damiet, who has previously thought mostly of clothing, begins to fall for Caladrius. At the taverns where Giulia once sang, there is a growing rebellion against the Basilisk. Near the decayed husk of Tormalyne Palace, powerful political figures and wandering idealists band together for a political coup, with Hollis assisting them. But something exists that is far more powerful than mere troops: the magic that the Basilisk wields. The heroes strike out against the sinister, aging despot and are caught in a clash of magic and music, between the dying symbol of an evil Basilisk and the last survivor of the Tormalyne family. It's astonishing how real Patricia McKillip's dreamy books seem, but the political themes and the sad remnents of the proud Tormalyne family give it an added dimension of reality. As usual, her magic is not the slam-bang-whizz of most fantasy books, but an underlying whisper. You can feel it in the playing of the music, the island of Luly, the forest where Caladrius finds his flute, and the husk of the Tormalyne palace. And not everything happens pleasantly--not everything twists to the way it should be in an ideal world, and not every injustice or crime can be reversed. McKillip recognizes and acknowledges this. Her characters are also very real. I particularly liked the composer Hexel, who spends half the book bewailing that he can't write without his muse and then scribbling furiously. Giulia Dulcet, Luna and Damiet are all excellently drawn: strong, intelligent Giulia, the powerful sorceress Luna who is far more than she seems to be, and the neglected Damiet who becomes so attached to the first person to treat her with real kindness. Because of his soul-scarred state, I found it a bit difficult to connect with Caladrius for a while, but once he got to the city things smoothed out a little. The Basilisk is a darker horse, though, as we don't really learn why he's so rotten. And Hollis and Justin are so sexy... The first few chapters, with half of Rook's life passing on Luly, are a bit difficult to wade through but after that the plot picks up speed. Her writing style is, as always, beautiful and evocative; my favorite scene may be the part where the white basilisk appears, bit by bit, in each mirror in the hall, followed by the statues that Luna summons. This book is also tempered with a bit of humor that pops up sometimes (Damiet's assigning a dress to each song; Hexel asking rhetorically what lovers think of aside from love, and Giulia's reply, "Clothes?") All in all, a beautiful fantasy novel with a wonderful writing style and a spellbinding story. Excellent!
Rating:
Summary: Highly satisfying reading!
Review: McKillip has again delivered first-class writing and lyrical storytelling, combined with a mature approach to significant issues. In her writing, the message is the focus--not the genre, and that's a lesson all authors can take note of, regardless of their field. Although it stands alone like a well-crafted sculpture, "Song for the Basilisk" returns to the tone and themes of McKillip's Riddlemaster trilogy. The book also seems to give a nod or two to another of my favorite authors, Guy Gavriel Kay, whose "Tigana", "A Song for Arbonne", and others stand proudly on my bookshelf very near to McKillip's own. I decided years ago to buy any book Patricia McKillip wrote, sight-unseen. "Song for the Basilisk" has strengthened my resolve!
Rating: 
Summary: ** yawn **
Review: McKillip has tried so hard to write "prettily" that she's forgotten to give us anything real. I felt like I was sleepwalking through her "prose opera" [as another reviewer rather saccharinely put it]. I didn't care about any of her characters, because she never gave me the chance. While they were whisping somnabulently through the vague and self-consciously pretty prose, I was just trying hard not to fall asleep. The sad thing is, none of her writing really wowwed me; had she spent more time on craft and less on art, she could have given us a good yarn, instead of a big yawn. There are many who are going to just eat this up: it has a vague artificiality that many people seem to love. I, however, didn't even think it was worth my time to finish. Terri Windling, in the Year's Best Fantasy and Horror for 1998 [jointly edited with Ellen Datlow] recommended this as one of the top 20 "must read" books for that year. Some of you are going to read this no matter what I say for just that reason: I ignored the poor and ambiguous reviews given here and read it anyway. I have to say, though, that while her recommendations are an excellent guide, she's not infallible [or maybe there was just a real lack of good fiction in the fantasy genre that year].
Rating:
Summary: ** yawn **
Review: McKillip has tried so hard to write "prettily" that she's forgotten to give us anything real. I felt like I was sleepwalking through her "prose opera" [as another reviewer rather saccharinely put it]. I didn't care about any of her characters, because she never gave me the chance. While they were whisping somnabulently through the vague and self-consciously pretty prose, I was just trying hard not to fall asleep. The sad thing is, none of her writing really wowwed me; had she spent more time on craft and less on art, she could have given us a good yarn, instead of a big yawn. There are many who are going to just eat this up: it has a vague artificiality that many people seem to love. I, however, didn't even think it was worth my time to finish. Terri Windling, in the Year's Best Fantasy and Horror for 1998 [jointly edited with Ellen Datlow] recommended this as one of the top 20 "must read" books for that year. Some of you are going to read this no matter what I say for just that reason: I ignored the poor and ambiguous reviews given here and read it anyway. I have to say, though, that while her recommendations are an excellent guide, she's not infallible [or maybe there was just a real lack of good fiction in the fantasy genre that year].
Rating:
Summary: Another Patricia McKillip excursion into lyrical magic
Review: Ms. McKillip's ability to put magic into fantasy combines neatly with her understanding of motivation, desire, and hope. In Song for the Basilisk, she explores themes of revenge and continuity - pitting the Basilisk's deadly gaze against the transforming music of the Griffon. More violent than some of her other books, SFTHB nevertheless shows her deft handling of power, loss, and the need for revenge - or at least closure. That she does so with her usual lyrical grace makes this novel doubly welcome. *NLV*
Rating: 
Summary: Flowery Prose doesn't save well written/flat novel
Review: No one can deny McKillip paints a pretty picture with her writing. Seemingly gifted with the eye and soul of a painter in the body of with the brain of a writer McKillip fills her novels with enough flowery prose to send Anne Rice running. Though McKillips flowery prose doesn't save this novels rather flat plot and characters that sized down to this story's rather un-epic scale. Perhaps taking the Tad Williams approach and writing a thousand page novel filled with the characters exploits would have boosted this novel up a few notches. Telling the tale of a young royal heir who hid in the fire place while his home and family burned, McKillip's amazing talent for showing the events of the burning and taking a clever idea of the 'Basilisk' makes the story almost a Historical Fiction if not for the supernatural overtones that haunt it. The story follows the young heir as he grows up and is sent off to study music and eventually earns his place and title as a bard. However McKillip moves from his childhood to adult hood to falling in love to having children in the span of a few pages when properly put all together. Once again one never really feels for the main character Rook or his children. Throwing in the opposing viewpoint of other characters in the story don't confuse or take away from the story. A trap that most writers fall into when approaching a story with Epic Scale potential only written in small size. There seems to be an old addage "Show, not Tell." I feel McKillip does too much of that. The book seems to be showing us a painting as vivid and as beautiful as the cover but not telling us a story behind it. Just a summarization of a story that has the potential to give George R.R. Martin a run for his Fanstistorical Money. Perhaps if McKillip had taken the time to write an epic novel and given more examples to paint the real picture of the main characters this novel would have earned five stars. But her lack of real well developed characterization drops the story down as well as it's short length several stars. This is one that a good read, but the flowery prose my overwhelm one and leave them empty of a plot and characters all in one.
Rating:
Summary: A prose opera
Review: Patricia McKillip has composed an opera purely of words. Don't let that description put you off: I don't generally like opera, but I loved this book. After the disappointing _Winter Rose_ and _The Book of Atrix Wolfe_, she's back at the peak of her form. The plot is pure opera: a ruthless tyrant, the Basilisk, massacres a rival family. The sole survivor, a young boy, crawls from the ashes and escapes into hiding in the far north, growing up with music and magic at the ancient school for bards. The Basilisk's gaze reaches even there, however, and the boy, now a grown man with a teenaged son of his own, is compelled to return to the city of his birth for revenge. There he meets the Basilisk's beautiful daughter (not to mention the Basilisk's brute of a son, the Basilisk's other, airheaded daughter, the Basilisk's court musicians and music director...). Wacky antics ensue. Patricia McKillip's characters burst with life: they breathe, they bleed, they sing, they ineptly plot revolution, they play in palaces and taverns, they go on murderous rampages, they throw temper tantrums and wield strange magics. She creates some of the coolest musician characters I've ever read about. She goes one better on the er-hu, the two-stringed, bowed, Chinese peasant instrument, and gives us the picochet, a one-stringed, bowed, peasant instrument. It makes the crops grow, she tells us. Remembering my experience with my father's er-hu (I was only able to produce feeble, distressed whines), I empathized (and laughed helplessly) at the ordeals of the Basilisk's unmusical younger daughter (not to mention her teachers). At least the girl was blessed with shameless unselfconsciousness. Patricia McKillip gives us an opera within the opera, one that reflects the main plotline much like Hamlet's play within the play, with even more startling effects when performed before the old tyrant. She shows us the process of composition, in loving detail, while the book itself is the performance. As always, McKillip knows exactly how to use her words. Her writing style is elegant, spare. In this book, she succeeds in creating a satisfying story to match the beauty of the prose.
Rating:
Summary: Another Knock-Out
Review: PMK delivers again with amazing prose and riveting characters. This book is more complex in plot, yet more comprehensible, than Winter Rose and Atrix Wolfe. I most appreciate the author's ability to bring characters to vivid life without tedious description of personal habits and appearance or lengthy "tell all" conversations. Yet another PMK hardback purchase. Having been stirred once again to tremendous literary admiration by SFTB, I have to ask: Ms. McKillip if you read this, are you going to just LEAVE US HANGING in the Cygnet books about whether Nyx and what's-his-name manage to get back together? What about dear old dad and not to mention grandpa? I really can't bear to re-read Cygnet/Firebird because I get too sweaty about What Will Happen Next without knowing if we'll ever find out! sorry for the digression
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