Spellsinger (Series Set, Books 1 - 8 ) - Alan Dean Foster - 1983-1994
By: C. R. Daems
Narrated by: John Chancer, Gordon Dulieu, Arthur Blake, Stuart Milligan
Series: Spellsinger Series, Books 1-8
Length: Approximately 51 hrs
Unabridged Audiobooks
Release date: 1983 - 1994 (publishing dates of audio versions vary)
Language: English
Genre: Fantasy
Publisher: Various
Format: mp3 64/48 mono
Note:
I compiled this collection from several sources.
While the audio quality varies from book to book, all are clear and quite enjoyable
Publisher's Summary
Spellsinger is a series of fantasy novels by American writer Alan Dean Foster. At present the series consists of eight books and, although there was a significant gap between the writing of book six and book seven, it seems unlikely that any more will be written.
Background:
The story initially deals with the characters of Jonathan Thomas Meriweather, referred to by the locals as Jon-Tom, when he is unwillingly pulled into a fantasy world by the turtle wizard Clothahump. Having been, at the moment of his transportation, high on cannabis, Jon-Tom initially thinks it is all a dream brought on by the drugs. He soon finds out differently: he is in an unfamiliar world with little prospect of returning home anytime soon.
The world of Spellsinger is largely inhabited by animals that are similar to those found on Earth, but are anthropomorphic: generally bipedal, they are intelligent, able to wear clothing and handle tools, generally closer to human-sized than their Earth counterparts, and are capable of speech. Humans, far from being the dominant species, here are equal to others.
The threat to the Western areas are from the Plated Folk, larger versions of insects and other arthropods who periodically mount assaults on the Western areas. Spiders are not included in the main society, which has centipedes and various insects like beetles. Spiders have their own society known as The Weavers, and are highly isolationist.
Book 1 - Spellsinger - 1983 (Gordon Dulieu)
In a world of sentient animals and humans, the hardheaded tortoise wizard Clothahump searches across the dimensions for another kind of wizard to help defeat the looming threat posed by the armies of the Plated Folk. What he gets is Jonathon Thomas Meriweather, law student, part-time would-be rock guitarist and janitor, who finds that with the use of a unique instrument called a duar, he can perform magic by playing and choosing from his well-worn repertoire of rock. Jon-Tom, as he is called in Clothahump’s world, quickly discovers that while he might be able to use magic with his music making, the results are often unpredictable and usually humorous. Ever searching for a way to get back to Earth, Jon-Tom takes up the battle to save this world.
Book 2 - Hour of the Gate - 1984 (Arthur Blake)
Jon-Tom just wanted to go home. Trapped in a world where animals speak and magic is real, the American college student yearned for an ordinary dorm-room life. But here his music has magical power—even if he can’t control it—which may be able to save the world from the army of the Plated Folk, whose sinister queen plans on killing and eating every warm-blooded mammal she can get her pincers on and taking over their lands.
The great battle is coming, and Jon-Tom, whose posse includes a wizarding turtle, a cowardly bat, and an otter with a filthy mind, must raise an army to fight it. To find allies they must make an impossible journey, across mountains and rivers no one has ever passed before. Survival will be a miracle—but Jon-Tom is no ordinary musician.
Book 3 - Day of Dissonance - 1984 (Arthur Blake)
Jon-Tom and his friends have seen better days. After his motley crew moved heaven and Earth to save civilization at the battle of Jo-Troom Gate, his merry band went its separate ways. Mudge, the foul-mouthed otter, eagerly returned to thieving, drinking, and whoring, while Talea, the girl of Jon-Tom’s dreams, embarked on her own adventures, leaving him to study magic with Clothahump, the irascible wizard whose inept spell trapped him in this weird otherworld in the first place.
But now Clothahump is dying, and not even Jon-Tom’s spellsinging can make him well. In search of medicine for the centuries-old turtle, he and Mudge venture across the seas on a dubious quest that will require the assistance of an Amazonian white tiger, a ferret, and a gender-challenged unicorn. They’re going to need all the help they can get.
Book 4 - Moment of the Magician - 1984 (Arthur Blake)
Far to the south of the peaceful Bellwoods, where Jon-Tom the spellsinger continues trying to master the art of turning music into magic, a sinister force has awakened: a magician with great ambition and unheard-of power. He summons lightning to do his bidding, commands an army of faceless flying demons, and claims to come from another world—one Jon-Tom suspects might be his own. If he can somehow reason with the unknown magician, perhaps they can combine their talents and find a way to go home together.
Wary of this new wickedness, Jon-Tom’s suspicious mentor sends the spellsinger and his companions on a journey to the southlands, assuring him that the land they are to visit is “tropical, friendly, and largely uninhabited.” As Jon-Tom learns all too often, in this mysterious world much will be proven catastrophically wrong.
Book 5 - The Paths of the Perambulator - 1985 (John Chancer)
It’s an ordinary day in the Bellwoods, save for the fact that Jon-Tom the spellsinger has awoken as a six-foot blue crab. He soon reverts to normal—as normal as a college student trapped in a world of magic and talking animals can be, anyway—but the bizarre changes keep happening, affecting not just him but the whole of this strange world. His wizardly mentor suspects these are the effects of the perambulator, a cosmic being whose presence distorts reality. One has been imprisoned in the mountains, and unless they free it, it will rip the world to shreds one insane illusion at a time.
So Jon-Tom sets out, backed by the wizard, a boozehound owl, a gutter-minded otter, and a warrior koala with a taste for leather. Saving the world will be a cinch, as long as they don’t lose their minds along the way.
Book 6 - The Time of the Transference - 1987 (John Chancer)
Jon-Tom has been trapped in a strange land of talking owls and wizarding turtles for a year now, his sole consolation that in this universe his musical abilities have inadvertently made him something of a sorcerer. But when an encounter with some burglars leads to him snapping the magical duar that channels his power, he finds himself an ordinary human again—on a quest to repair his instrument with nothing but his staff and his semi-faithful, ever-complaining otter sidekick to defend him. The journey takes them to the ends of the earth—and beyond. On the run from some half-wit pirates, they dart into a cave and find themselves in San Antonio, the shortcut to home that Jon-Tom has long dreamed about. But Texas wants nothing to do with this long-haired wizard, or the unpleasant creatures who are tracking him.
Book 7 - Son of Spellsinger - 1993 (Stuart Milligan)
Decades have passed since college student Jon-Tom Meriweather was first marooned in a strange land of magic, and over the years he has married, raised a son, and honed his voice so that the effects of his spellsinging—whereby he calls up magic with song—are almost predictable. His son’s voice is another matter. Buncan wants to follow in his father’s adventurous footsteps, but his every chord brings more discord, and there seem to be no good quests to be had.
When one falls in his lap—investigating something called the Grand Veritable, whose very name is enough to send wizened wizards hiding under their covers—he seeks the help of two of his friends, children of Jon-Tom’s old otter sidekick Mudge, whose voices are as pure as Buncan’s is muddy. The determined trio runs away from home, ready to pit their teenage talents against a very adult danger.
Book 8 - Chours Skating - 1994 (Stuart Milligan)
Jon-Tom and Mudge are bored. Their adventuring days long behind them, the spellsinger and his once-thieving otter sidekick have settled into a life of tepid domesticity, and they are sick of it. They hunger for an old-fashioned adventure, but there are no more great evils to combat. And so they decide to follow the music. Literally.
A drifting cloud of lost chords has taken to floating around Jon-Tom, and following it puts them on the trail of an evil that terrifies the spellsinger. Something is stealing music. Finding out who, and why, is responsible for the silencing of the instruments will put Jon-Tom and Mudge into great peril, at the hands of a selfish elephant, a greedy black bear, and a whirlpool with a filthy sense of humor. Seeking adventure, they’ve stumbled into one turn that may turn out to be their last.
© 1983-1994 Alan Dean Foster ℗ Various
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