Rating: 
Summary: acceptable nighttime fluff
Review: A somewhat pedestrian sequel continuing Anna's travails through what is essentially a fantasy-by-the-numbers world. Anna lurches from crisis to crisis solving them with ruthless efficiency and in doing this, Modesitt has avoided the common tendancy to have a supremely powerful character agonise for chapters before taking action that most of us would realise is inevitable. Don't look to this book for in depth characterisations or novel concepts. Treat it as light reading and you won't be disappointed.
Rating: 
Summary: Too many complaints!
Review: All I have to say is that if you knew anything about the author at all, you wouldn't have so many complaints. Writing is a reflection of who we are. It encompasses everything around us. Do a little research about the author and I guarantee you'll like the books ten times more!
Rating: 
Summary: Oh please
Review: How can you take a book with names like "Lord Jimbob" seriously? The writing is fuzzy and the characters [other than Anna] are one dimensional. Anns is just whiney, unlikable and unsympathetic. Does everyone always have to be the most powerful all the time? Is there ever a character in a fantasy book that doesn't kick ass from the very beginning? And doesn't anyone have a handle on the craft of writing in this genre besides Robert Jordan? There may very well be answers to these questions, but they won't be found in anything by Modesitt. Mr. M, read your reviews, take the hint and end the series.
Rating:
Summary: This book took forever!!
Review: I couldn't wait to finish this book, but unfortunately it took forever. There was no excitment in this book, none of the energy present in his Recluse series is here - I think he may have felt the same way: when will this book end?
Rating: 
Summary: Review of The Spellsong War by L. E. Modesitt Jr.
Review: I enjoyed the novel "The Soprano Sorceress" and I was looking foreward to reading "The Spellson War." I enjoyed the book. However, I was shocked by the language. The Lady Anna, in my opinion, would not use crude and vulgar expressions such as the F and Sh words. One might expect such language from low-bred teens and soldiers, but not from decent college professors. Educated people usually have sufficient vocabulary to express themselves without resorting to crude or opbscene language.
"The Spellsong war" is wonderfully conceived, and executed. I feel sorry that the author chose to use vulgar expressions to make the book "cool."
Rating:
Summary: Review of The Spellsong War by L. E. Modesitt Jr.
Review: I enjoyed the novel "The Soprano Sorceress" and I was looking foreward to reading "The Spellson War." I enjoyed the book. However, I was shocked by the language. The Lady Anna, in my opinion, would not use crude and vulgar expressions such as the F and Sh words. One might expect such language from low-bred teens and soldiers, but not from decent college professors. Educated people usually have sufficient vocabulary to express themselves without resorting to crude or opbscene language.
"The Spellsong war" is wonderfully conceived, and executed. I feel sorry that the author chose to use vulgar expressions to make the book "cool."
Rating: 
Summary: a little dissapointing after the 1st but good nonetheless
Review: I liked it. The soprano sorceress was better and more original though. The thing i didn't like was the underdevelopment of the characters. Nothing new was added and the good characters died too quickly. The part I liked about it was that Anna and Jecks FINALLY start a leaning tward each other. I sincerly hope the third will be better. My advice to the author is, STOP making Anna eat so much! we get the idea already! overall it was a nice book IF you read the first one.
Rating:
Summary: Decently done sequel, A tad light on character building
Review: I liked this volume over the first. The building of the relationship between Anna and Lord Jecks was handled well and added much to the over-all plot development. I would have liked to have seen more details on "Darksong" majic and why it has the effects it does. Maybe we learn as Anna does. I am looking forward to the next in this series. All in all it is a darn good read, good escapism; which is why we read fantasy isn't it? If I want realism, I'll read Time or Newsweek.
Rating:
Summary: Dissapointing Sequel
Review: I really enjoyed the first book in the series, and was excited to read the next one. What I got was a very blah book. It's hard to pinpoint the exact problem. Almost all character/world building is left to the first novel. The first novel had Anna's introduction to Erde and many of her reactions to her new circumstances, and learning about her new powers. This book doesn't build on those themes much, though relying on the same complaints she often had, from the first book. All politics are mostly shown by snippits of the other world leaders of Erde having bland discussion with their subordinates. Perhaps this is all building towards something larger in the next book, but I felt that I would have been just fine with Anna's storyline, and not had the world politics revealed to me without so much as a spellsong. OK, the novel is called the Spellsong War, but the Spellsong War parts bored me to tears, as well as the traveling between them, so what was left to this book? Not much. Speaking of long sections. I haven't read many Modestitt Jr books, so I don't know if this practice of copying text is common in the other ones. I could almost feel the copy-paste in the computer happening as I read. I had the sense that I had read several sections before, almost to the letter. The same description about flowery language, same complaing from Anna about the things following it happened over and over.
It's always Holly Lolly Polly Pop... We learned more warm ups in 2nd grade, why does she almost never vary it?
Almost everytime the hat is mentioned it is 'the floppy hat' with no other description. If you're not providing new information about an item, why bother mentioning it? I can almost always remember to imagine it as floppy. or flowery, or that she has to clear the same mucus from her throat or ect. Music. This is a problem. I have never been an opera singer, but I have been in a performing orchestra. Anna is missing some spark that makes it seem like she's been up on the stage. That she knows more about music than words like vocalise, or strophic (which is not clear to me, as a musician, though I could research it). She never seems to feel the music build in her, never describes what it's like to be the music, the intrument, to be carried by the rush of performance. Perhaps she's too...tired.(as she always is) But would it have hurt L.E. to do a bit more research into how music feels? how it feels to perform? Has he ever talked to a group of musicians? felt their passion? seen how they can geek out over an overture, or aria? Also, I understand she may not be a composer, but the snippets provided don't do enough to show that they are actually part of songs, The closest we get is a bit from The Battle Hymn, but as a classically trained opera singer(usually charged with memorization of their music) she should have a much larger set of music to draw from, even children's music as she's had children. Many of these things I forgave in the first novel, due to the intresting premise, characters, places. Somehow Anna has become a flatter character, with less to offer in this novel. I had expected things to evolve more, and was let down. With all of that said, I'll still likely give the 3rd book a try, I'm still interested in the premise, and want to see if things really do improve with the 3rd novel. I'm hoping for less travel, and more character building.
Rating:
Summary: Dissapointing Sequel
Review: I really enjoyed the first book in the series, and was excited to read the next one. What I got was a very blah book. It's hard to pinpoint the exact problem. Almost all character/world building is left to the first novel. The first novel had Anna's introduction to Erde and many of her reactions to her new circumstances, and learning about her new powers. This book doesn't build on those themes much, though relying on the same complaints she often had, from the first book. All politics are mostly shown by snippits of the other world leaders of Erde having bland discussion with their subordinates. Perhaps this is all building towards something larger in the next book, but I felt that I would have been just fine with Anna's storyline, and not had the world politics revealed to me without so much as a spellsong. OK, the novel is called the Spellsong War, but the Spellsong War parts bored me to tears, as well as the traveling between them, so what was left to this book? Not much. Speaking of long sections. I haven't read many Modestitt Jr books, so I don't know if this practice of copying text is common in the other ones. I could almost feel the copy-paste in the computer happening as I read. I had the sense that I had read several sections before, almost to the letter. The same description about flowery language, same complaing from Anna about the things following it happened over and over.
It's always Holly Lolly Polly Pop... We learned more warm ups in 2nd grade, why does she almost never vary it?
Almost everytime the hat is mentioned it is 'the floppy hat' with no other description. If you're not providing new information about an item, why bother mentioning it? I can almost always remember to imagine it as floppy. or flowery, or that she has to clear the same mucus from her throat or ect. Music. This is a problem. I have never been an opera singer, but I have been in a performing orchestra. Anna is missing some spark that makes it seem like she's been up on the stage. That she knows more about music than words like vocalise, or strophic (which is not clear to me, as a musician, though I could research it). She never seems to feel the music build in her, never describes what it's like to be the music, the intrument, to be carried by the rush of performance. Perhaps she's too...tired.(as she always is) But would it have hurt L.E. to do a bit more research into how music feels? how it feels to perform? Has he ever talked to a group of musicians? felt their passion? seen how they can geek out over an overture, or aria? Also, I understand she may not be a composer, but the snippets provided don't do enough to show that they are actually part of songs, The closest we get is a bit from The Battle Hymn, but as a classically trained opera singer(usually charged with memorization of their music) she should have a much larger set of music to draw from, even children's music as she's had children. Many of these things I forgave in the first novel, due to the intresting premise, characters, places. Somehow Anna has become a flatter character, with less to offer in this novel. I had expected things to evolve more, and was let down. With all of that said, I'll still likely give the 3rd book a try, I'm still interested in the premise, and want to see if things really do improve with the 3rd novel. I'm hoping for less travel, and more character building.
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