Whose Song Is Sung: A Novel - Softcover

Schaefer, Frank

3.8

20 ratings by Goodreads

9780812550122: Whose Song Is Sung: A Novel

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0812550129 ISBN 13: 9780812550122

Publisher: Tom Doherty Assoc Llc, 1996

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After being sold into slavery, Musculus Herodes Formosus--a former jester and counselor to kings--embarks on a journey during which he crosses paths with Beowulf, Slayer of Monsters, and becomes part of a legend. Reprint.

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From Kirkus Reviews:

Visceral retelling of the Beowulf saga through the eyes of a dwarf: fast-paced action mixed with politically incorrect insights into Anglo-Saxon and Roman culture. Schaefer (The Scapeweed Goat, 1989) paints a Hieronymous Bosch-like portrait of the Western world at a fascinating juncture in history: the Roman Empire's final dissolution and the rise of the ``barbarian'' civilization of the Anglo-Saxons. The tale is told by Musculus the Dwarf, an elderly anchorite in a monastery ca. a.d. 695, putting paper to pen (as the book's archaic style would have it) to recount a life in which he appears, Zelig-like, at a number of critical events in history. First, he's Emperor Heraclius' crafty advisor in decadent Rome, a pampered sniffer-out of schemes and intrigues; then, sold into slavery among barbarians at the Emperor's death, he undergoes a series of tests--working as a galley slave, escaping death at the hands of murderous bandits, learning to survive like an animal in vast forests--until fate delivers him to the Geats and Beowulf. As he both witnesses and intervenes (a crucial suggestion about adding a keel to a Viking ship here, stabbing a monster in the back there), we see, smell, and recoil from the cruelty and brutality of the time even as we acquire a taste for blood vengeance and casual sex in the open mead-hall. Casting Beowulf as an Arnold Schwarzenegger obsessed with besting his own fears and childhood humiliations, the author shows how the Anglo-Saxon death-wish culture could seem, for all its vulgarity, like a breath of fresh air after the Roman decline. A bright retelling of a still-vital myth, highly readable if subject to the usual banalities of sword-and-shield dialogue. With this as a text, perhaps Hollywood could coax Arnold back into a loincloth for a last hurrah. -- Copyright �1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Publishers Weekly:

A freewheeling reinvention of the Beowulf epic, Schaefer's debut is narrated by Musculus, a cynical, aging dwarf who looks back, in A.D. 695, on his adventures with his deceased heroic friend, Beowulf the Northman. Schaefer gives us an aloof Beowulf whose readily apparent physical gifts-golden shoulder-length hair, super physique-mask a radical intellect capable of breaking with tradition. He is a driven monster-slayer who lost both his parents by age three and needs to prove his invincibility. Grendel is here the fearsome Grundbar. Musculus, who goes nowhere without his pet raven, Amin, recounts his own early adventures at the court of the Byzantine emperor in Constantinople, how he was sold at the Kiev slave auction to a Greek merchant, his escape and roisterous exploits with Beowulf's brawling, wenching, ferocious band. He's an engaging narrator, blending a modern skepticism with a coarseness appropriate to the brutal medieval setting. Though sometimes ornamental and flowery, his voice is generally supple as it tells a richly textured tale that should appeal to fans of both fantasy and historical fiction.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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