Το τραγούδι του κυνηγού δεν ήταν ένα βιβλίο από το οποίο είχα μεγάλες προσδοκίες ωστόσο το πήρα πιστεύοντας ότι θα διαβάσω μια ευχάριστη περιπέτεια με ήρωες τις πανέξυπνες γάτες.Συνολικά δεν ήταν κακό βιβλίο απλά εμένα προσωπικά με άφησε αδιάφορη και με έκανε να βαρεθώ αρκετά.Η ιστορία περιστρέφεται γύρω από τον Φρίτι Κυνογονούρη έναν νεαρό γάτο που ζει σε μια περιοχή,άγνωστη στους αναγνώστες, μαζί με άλλους γάτους.Όταν η αγαπημένη του φίλη , η Αλαφροπάτητη εξαφανίζεται μυστηριωδώς όπως και άλλες γάτες του Λαού του, ο Φρίτι αποφασίζει να ξεκινήσει ένα μεγάλο ταξίδι ώστε να τη βρει. Στο ταξίδι του αυτός και ο μικρός του σύντροφος, ο Σβελτούλης θα έρθουν αντιμέτωποι με πολλούς κινδύνους και θα κλιθούν να αντιμετωπίσουν κάτι πολύ πιο σκοτεινό από αυτό που φαντάζονταν.Να πω αρχικά ότι οι ιστορίες με ομιλούντα ζώα δεν είναι από τις αγαπημένες μου, αν και λατρεύω τα ζώα και ειδικά τα σκυλάκια.Ίσως γι αυτό και να μην μου άρεσε η ιστορία και να τη βρήκα τόσο βαρετή.Ωστόσο πέρα από το υποκειμενικό κριτήριο υπάρχουν αρκετά πράγματα που αντικειμενικά έκαναν αυτό το βιβλίο κουραστικό.Ο συγγραφέας προσπαθεί μέσα σε αυτό το βιβλίο να συνδυάσει μέσα σε αυτό το βιβλίο στοιχεία που ταιριάζουν περισσότερο σε παιδικό μυθιστόρημα και στοιχεία που αντιπροσωπεύουν μεγαλύτερες ηλικίες.Από τη μια πρωταγωνιστές είναι αποκλειστικά τα ζώα και οι χαρακτήρες παρουσιάζονται με έναν αφελές και παιδικό τρόπο με μια καρτουνίστικη σκιαγράφηση και από την άλλη οι περιπέτειες που καλούνται να αντιμετωπίσουν είναι αρκετά άγριες και σκοτεινές που σίγουρα θα τρόμαζαν μικρότερης ηλικίας αναγνωστικό κοινό.Έτσι αισθάνομαι ότι αυτό το βιβλίο δεν μπορεί κατά κάποιο τρόπο να ανταποκριθεί στα γούστα κανενός γιατί οι μεν θα το βρούνε βαρετό και παιδιάστικο οι δε πολύ τρομακτικό.Ένα ακόμη πράγμα που με κούρασε ήταν τα πολύ παράξενα ονόματα και οι άπειροι χαρακτήρες που εμφανιζόταν ανά τακτά χρονικά διαστήματα αναγκάζοντας με συνέχεια να γυρνάω πίσω στο παράρτημα που είχε ο συγγραφέας για να θυμηθώ ποιος είναι ποιος.Το ίδιο συνέβη και με το ιδιαίτερο «γατολεξικό» που δημιούργησε με κάποιες ξεχωριστές λέξεις που χρησιμοποιούσαν οι γάτες.Ειλικρινά δεν κατάλαβα το λόγο ύπαρξης τους αφού ουσιαστικά ούτε τα περίεργα ονόματα ούτε οι παράξενες λέξεις εξυπηρέτησαν σε κάτι την ιστορία απλά την έκαναν ακόμη πιο κουραστική.Για να μην μείνω μόνο στα αρνητικά, η ιστορία σε σύνολο ήταν αρκετά πρωτότυπη και ο συγγραφέας φαίνεται ότι έπλασε με μεγάλη προσοχή και φαντασία τον κόσμο του, απλά η εκτέλεση για μένα δεν ήταν τόσο καλή.Πιστεύω πάντως ότι θα μπορούσε να υπάρξει και δεύτερο βιβλίο μιας και πολλά ερωτήματα μένουν αναπάντητα.
Fritti Tailchaser is a young ginger tomcat in a world where cats have their own language, culture, and mythology. When his friend and prospective mate Hushpad goes missing, Tailchaser sets out on a quest to discover what distant evil threatens the lives of the Folk. Tailchaser's Song is a generic fantasy questing novel with larger-than-life gods and a feline wrapping--but, unfortunately, Williams knows nothing about cats. Gross inaccuracies and general misconceptions strip away the feline aspect and so destroy this book's only unique aspect. I do not recommend it.In plot, pacing, and writing style, Tailchaser's Song is unexceptional but not that bad. Williams knows how to write a novel, if not a very good one, and the book follows many common fantasy tropes. Tailchaser is an unassuming small "town" youth who leaves on an ill-advised quest which leads him to a big city, to an enemy city, and up against a scheming powerful antagonist so that good may triumph against evil. Bits of interspersed mythology create a powerful setting, yet this mythology still seem out of place when it enters the plot. Williams paces his book well, and Tailchaser's journey feels realistically long while maintaining interesting variety. Best of all, the book doesn't end as soon as evil is vanquished, identifying Tailchaser is a character in his own right and not just a tool of the story. All in all, the book is aptly- but not well-written: readable, passably skillful, but not memorable.However, what sets this book apart is also what condemns it. Tailchaser is a cat, and his journey leads him through cat cities and against cat gods. But for all this focus on cats, Williams knows little about them. They speak a "high" language which is almost entirely spoken--but domestic cats don't vocalize among each other. Williams believes that kittens are born without fur, that cats prefer forests, that they live in teeming cities, that they can overdose on catnip. Cats also hunt mice and clean themselves and heckle dogs, but on the whole what Williams gets right are generalities and nothing more. Worse, he sets feral cats as the ideal--a dangerous and false lesson to the reader. Real cats are not the indigenous master species presented in Tailchaser's Song, nor do they hate humans for neutering, nor are housecats somehow inferior. Whatever personal secret it is that cats keep in their own silent, heavy-eyed company, despising M'an, building huge cat cities in forests, and originating from powerful old cat-gods is not it.The premise of this book probably appeals most to cat fans--but the book itself will be most disappointing to cat fans. On the whole, the book is neither very good nor very bad. Capably written but not particularly skillful, it's a fairly average fantasy novel. The cat characters, on the other hand, could be quite exceptional--but this is not a book in the lines of Watership Down or even the Redwall series. In fact, there are barely any cats here--merely predictable human characters wrapped in cursory fur. With nothing else to endorse the book, I don't recommend Tailchaser's Song. While it is not outright bad, it is disappointing.(As the writing isn't incredibly awful, I can't be quite so virulently negative about this book as I might like to be while still maintaining some sense of a fair assessment. However: I hated it. I hated it a lot--because if you're so captured by the magic of your first pet cat you should at least pretend to know something of that magic before you write a book about it. Cats don't have gender identities and aren't meant to be feral and, for the love of all that which is good, they do not meow at each other. A basic encyclopedia article offers more truth about the mystical depths of cat nature than there are in the 400 pages of this book. I really, really hated it.)
What do You think about Tailchaser's Song (2000)?
There is a scene in a (I could be wrong) little known film from the early '90s called Sweet Nothing. Michael Imperioli (you probably know him from The Sopranos) is addicted to the drugs he's peddling. You know, dealing drugs on the side of his little league Wall Street job wasn't as fun and easy as it first seemed. His not really his friend boss (played by Paul Calderon) looks at him with abject disgust and proclaims: "You crackhead motherfucker." It's not that good of a film but I always liked the way that Calderon says that line at the precise moment when Imperioli couldn't lie anymore about being anything else. There's also a good speech from Imperioli's character about chasing that first time high. He uses an analogy about cherry snow cones. Nothing before or since had ever tasted so cold and sweet but he keeps eating them anyway. Okay, Tailchaser's Song isn't Watership Down! You crackhead motherfucker. What was I thinking? I was thinking about Watership Down. I... can't help it! The times I read Watership Down were some of the happiest of my entire life. What else am I going to do?I started reading Tailchaser's Song months ago. I stalled a bit, er a lot, because it seemed to be written in that 1980s overwritten fantasy style. You know the one when you keep reading them anyway and they force you to eat all kinds of snacks that are bad for you while you are reading them and then you put on too much weight? You know the ones. Please don't pretend you don't. We've come too far to turn back now! Take my hand. I won't leave without you! I've got your letter to Snowball and Fritz and they'll grow up proud of their papa. We're going to make it and then we're going to set up a nice little place and tend the rabbits. Tailchaser's Song is better than the other pathetic attempts on my part to recreate Watership Down. No, I mean the pathetic attempt on part of the authors. I didn't do anything wrong. I was just innocently trying to read a water(ship)ed down version of the best book in the known universe. No one tries to rape anyone either like in Watership Down with Birds and Watership Down with Wolves, at least (those were some creepy as fuck scenes. I wasn't hungry at all). There's really nothing wrong with it. It's your typical quest story. There's a nice moral of the story about that feeling I always got when reading or watching quest stories. You know when they go home and they have to leave the amazing friends they made behind? And why does the damned story have to end and they can't keep any of those super cool friends? What was the point of going through all of that to just go home? Why can't the good stuff last forever and ever? Fritti has that at the end and I loved that he doesn't want to give that good stuff up. That was pretty right on on Tad Williams's part. But? The steady stream of animals they meet and episodic jams didn't make ME want to never go home. I didn't give much of a dump about the cat royalty either. It was nice enough but I didn't ever live in that world. I wanted to live in it! I wanted beep Watership Down. I did like how Fritti mourns for his lost kittenhood from time to time. He was pretty cute. I mean, I totally respect him as his own cat and I'm not a M'an. I'm a little pissed that his girlfriend was another dumb female in one of these stories. Why do they always do that? Even my precious Watership Down didn't represent the ladies too well. We like adventures too!My heart is hollow like a chocolate bunny now. Tailchaser (the cats have three names just like in Russian novels) gets to keep his friends. What about me? What do I get? I don't even want to eat these dang cheese sandwiches. No, you eat them. I'm too depressed. I have learned my lesson once and for all. NO MORE WATERSHIP DOWN READALIKES.Okay, but this one could be good! This one might really be just like Watership Down... I'm not a total loser!
—Mariel
I don't think that my general dislike of cats is what colored my overall non-appreciation of Tailchaser's Song. Sure, I was apprehensive at the start, but I had no trouble falling in with the universe created here. It is more likely the author's buildup to some "catastrophic" battle that eventually takes place largely off-screen that is my biggest problem. The animal-centric journey there wasn't all that awful - not great, mind you, - but pretty typical of the largely tired cliched fantasy/quest genre writing of the early/mid 1980s. Tad Williams - actually no slouch in the fantasy department (see his wordy Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn trilogy) - covers most of the familiar bases here, with little in the way of anything particularly revealing or unexpected as his titular feline hero spends a lot of time wandering through forests.Dull and rather pointless.
—Rich Rosell
I read this book years ago and loved it to bits, so when I saw it in a bookshop recently I just had to buy it. Now it is always very different reading a book years on, especially when you have such high expectations, but overall this didn't disappoint. This book is essentially about cats, or the folk, as they like to call themselves and one kitten in particular, Fritti Tailchaser, who goes on a desperate quest to discover what has happened to his beloved Hushpad, who has disappeared along with many others of the folk. However this journey takes a sinister turn and Fritti, young and inexperienced, has to grow up quickly to meet this challenge for the sake of not only himself but all the folk; fortunately, he has help in the form of his friends, Pouncequick and Roofshadow.A must for any cat lovers, I think!
—amelia cavendish
