I finally finished reading Firesong by William Nicholson last night (which is good because I can read the Ursula Le Guin that I’ve been looking forward to getting stuck into), and I have to say that it was good, but not as good as the previous two in the trilogy – The Wind Singer and The Slaves of Mastery.
I thought I recognised “The Wind Singer” but of course I was thinking of “The Windsingers” by Megan Lindholm (aka Robin Hobb) which I happened to read when I was in my teens. At the time I thought it was a marvellous book, full of mysterious and unexplained races and cultures. You never felt you really knew fully what was going on, nor could you entirely picture the story locations in your mind’s eye. Today, after looking up Megan Lindholm on amazon, I discover that The Windsingers was actually book 2 in a trilogy, of which I never read book 1 or book 3. I never knew this! It seemed entirely standalone to me – no mention of any prequel or sequel. Well that explains why I could follow what on earth was going on and so much seemed to happen without explanation. 🙂