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Card seems to have a predilection for having child protagonists. But not just any children, rather children who are special, who are prodigies, who in many ways are far stronger than most adults. This book is no exception, with Ansset as the premier Songbird of his day. Songbirds are specially trained child singers, trained in not just the basics of music, but more importantly in how to read the emotional makeup of their audience and express it in their songs. Ansset is assigned to be the Songbird for the Emperor Mikal, a brutal man who thinks nothing of wiping out the entire population of a planet to further his ends. But the end Mikhal is driving toward is lasting peace throughout the galaxy - a truly benevolent dictator. It is just this moral ambiguity that Ansset sees and understands, just as he can understand, accept, and reciprocate the love of Josif, a bisexual who can only be attracted to one person at time. In fact, there are no hard and fast moral laws laid down in this book. Fraud, kidnapping, assassination, murder, homosexuality, pedophilia, devotion, political machinations, and, yes, even true love all receive an examination here, and each item is shown in more than one light. A good part of this book's strength lies within these examinations, which are shown by the events and people Ansset is exposed to, rather than by any sort of expository dialogue. The rest of the strength lies within the raw emotion that sings throughout this book, an almost poetic handling of what would be in lesser hands a very ugly set of happenings. Characterization is excellent, for not just Ansset but also all the players around him: Mikal, Ricktors, Esste, Kya-Kya - each are unique individuals that breathe life into this work. Not so good is the believability of the basic scenarios, from Ansset's incredible ability as a very young child to read the deep emotional makeup of those around him and sing that back to them, certain fighting skills that Ansset learns, even to the musical language members of the Songhouse converse with. While Card makes a good stab at presenting these items in such a way as to try and make them believable, and while reading it these doubts can easily be pushed into the background, after closing the book they leave a bit of a sense of something not quite right, a lack of direct applicability to the 'real' world. While this is not a great flaw, it does bring this book down from the level he achieved in Ender's Game, making it merely very good as opposed to that book's greatness. --- Reviewed by Patrick Shepherd (hyperpat)
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