Review: Echoes of the Great Song by David Gemmel
I’m a great fan of David Gemmell’s work and was saddened to hear of his death in 2006. I’ve got at least 17 of his novels at home and thought I’d read everything except the Troy series (which doesn’t really appeal to me) when I stumbled accross "Echoes of the Great Song" at my local library.
This book doesn’t fit into any of Gemmell’s other series and I don’t think it’s one of his best but it’s worth a read all the same.
The basic premise is that the world and even time itself is all part of a "great song" and if you can play the right music and have the right power source you can manipulate matter (build great cities), heal, have eternal youth and change the rate at which you experience time. The avatars had discovered these principles and a way of using crystals to store energy gathered from the sun. They then proceeded to dominate their world living like gods and treating all other races as inferior.
After two thousand years of civilisation all is not going well for the avatars however. A great cataclism has resulted in a new ice age; their capital city and main source of energy is buried under ice and only a few hundred living in remote cities remain. Knowing that the avatars power is dwindling the formerly sub-subservient civilisations are plotting rebellion.
Things get worse however when another civilisation very similar to the avatars in a parallel universe escapes from its own cataclism by invading the avatar’s world. The invaders seek only blood to power their crystals and so pose a threat great enough to force ther natives into an uneasy alliance.
As other reviews have pointed out, we soon arrive at the standard bunch of ill-matched characters on a quest to defeat the invadors but this is being slightly unfair since this happens against of a backdrop of politics and betrayal played out elsewhere in the world and we do see a lot of character development as avatars and ordinary humans learn to trust each other.
Gemmell has never been one to go for the "happily ever after" style of ending and his books tend to end with heroes that are victorious but dead or a victory that is real but temporary. Some of his endings, particularly of the Rigante series are almost heartbreaking. I sense that Gemmell has always been interested in having a degree of realism regarding how characters interact and evelop and in some cases uses his books to explore issues from our history - for example the Rigante series deals with the collision of a Roman-like civilisation with a celtic-style tribal civilisation founded on personal honour.
This book won’t leave you with a warm glow of happiness either but it’s the journey that’s important not the destination and this is a book worth reading. If you find some of the other fantasy writing out there a bit too sugary for your taste you should definitely give Gemmell a try.
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