The Voice – Anne Bishop

Sometimes you read a story which changes the way you view your world and how you feel about who you are. A message jumps out of the narrative and axiomatically smacks you in the face leaving you in stunned silence as you turn the last page. Not to be dramatic or anything here but this is exactly what happened to me while reading The Voice by Anne Bishop.

Though I have not read one of Anne Bishop's books in years, the last one was Belladonna, I am a huge fan. If asked for my top five authors Ms Bishop would definitely get a mention, the original Black Jewels trilogy would make the list of greatest things I have ever read. I'm not wanting to sound all fangirl or anything, rather I am trying to honestly admit I was always going to like Ms Bishop's novella The Voice and give it a favourable review.

No one writes dark fantasy quite like Anne Bishop, gritty and not always pleasant the truth is not hidden from the characters who find themselves traversing her inner worlds, nor is it obscured from the reader. Sometimes bad things happen to good people and bad people alike, a fact Ms Bishop has never sugar coated in any of her work I have had the pleasure of reading.

The Voice delivers exactly what I expected it too when I made my purchase, reading it was like watching a sad movie, I knew I was going to cry way before the first tears filled my eyes. For me there is something cathartic about immersing myself in fiction which allows real emotions to bubble to the surface.

There are times I don't recognise the need to release negative feeling until afterwards, other times I will seek out a tear jerking movie or book (Thelma and Louise saw me through a lot of teenage angst) chasing the euphoria of emotional release. This euphoric release is exactly what The Voice gave me. It is a more a fable than a story, an engrossing lesson in the need to deal with our darker emotions and not just let them fester inside or worse still foist them on others.

In a small village, Nalah is taught to feed her sorrow to 'The Voice', a poor mute orphan who was in fact the recipient for the entire village's unfavourable emotions. Upon a visit to the city of Vision Nalah is shown a better way to lance her soul of its sorrow, this is where the plan to escape a toxic life and save those who can be saved begins to form.

The morals of this fable are clear, nourish your body with food rather than punish it, acknowledge and then deal with your pain without inflicting it on others and lastly, one of the most important messages for me personally, one person may not be able to save the world but if they try they may just save one person from the world.

The Voice is a story about purging ourselves of toxicity, letting our anguish out and moving on. You see Nalah lance her own soul of sorrow and help her friends and 'The Voice' ameliorate their noxious feelings as well. It would be impossible to read Anne Bishop's novella The Voice without Lancing your own soul of some of its sorrow. Definitely (and obviously) the whole 5 teabags for this one, a perfect cup of tea I know I will be tasting again.

What books have changed the way you view the world?

The Many-Coloured Land – Julian May

Sci-fi novels are a bone of contention in my household, Mr Saunders loves them, I do not. Now and then he will go on and on about a book I should read, he tells me, “it is different from other sci-fi you have read”,“you’ll love the story line”, “it isn't really 'strictly speaking' sci-fi”. Every time he gets that excited about another one of his favourite authors or series I just know I will end up with it on my kindle and this is exactly how I came to read The Many-Coloured Land by Julian May.

The novel is done in three parts, part one was full of character set up, giving a new character to every chapter. It was all very wham bam thank you ma'am, a lot of information to take in and frankly by the time I got to part two I had forgotten a lot of who was who and needed to work it all out again anyway. I found the chapters centred on a single character disorientating and at times a little too brief giving virtually no real character building. I’m not the kind of person who skips parts of a book, but if I was I probably would have skipped huge sections of part one.

For me the story got better in part two, finally the antagonist is introduced to the unlikely heroes, who I kind of, maybe remember a bit about. The problem for me with The Many-Coloured Land was not the plot, the story-line quite enjoyable once I got into part two and I especially enjoyed the clever supposition of Celtic mythology into a story about the Pilocene era. For me the problem was too much scientific description for my taste, which is quite a common issue I have with many sci-fi books.

I love watching sci-fi and I really wished I liked reading it but I just can't stomach all the long winded descriptions about how various gadgets work. Every now and then I struggle through all of the technological lingo to read a sci-fi book, but it is a battle I fight hard to win. I broke reading The Many-Coloured Land up with other books in between. Finish part one reward myself with another book before continuing on, another reward for finishing part two and then I was on the home ward stretch.

Honestly this is not an awful story, being published in 1981 it has stood the test of time as an outstanding example of well received science fiction. Personally I'm just not a fan of heavy scientific descriptions or historical geology and The Many-Coloured Land is full of lengthy paragraphs dedicated to describing the Pliocene epoch in meticulous detail.

As much as I found the plot enjoyable I am not sure I will be continuing on to any of the other books in the series. Julian May is a much loved author and The Saga of The Exiles has been highly praised by many people through out the thirty plus years since it was published, I am only going to give it 3 tea bags however as it is definitely not my cup of tea.