Overview
A powerful tale of courage and adventure, Whose Song Is Sung is a bold and dramatic account of the most famous epic in the English language retold by a most remarkable narrator. Born into the decadent splendor of the Byzantine court, Musculus Herodes Formosus began life a bastard, an outlander, and a dwarf. But through cunning, eloquence, and a keen understanding of the human heart, he soon transcended his origins, becoming a favorite of the emperor Heraclius, and a power in his own right. But fate is fickle, and power fleeting. Betrayed by a vengeful courtesan, Musculus finds himself overnight stripped of his influence, sold into slavery, learning to live by his wits for the first time in his lush, pampered life. Learning quickly, narrowly escaping death a dozen times, Musculus is swept up on a remarkable odyssey through one of the most harrowing eras in human history. His journey will take him across the face of the known world, bringing him at last to the land of the Northmen, where he encounters Einarr, the young Viking prince who will one day be known as Beowulf, Slayer of Monsters, and play a crucial role in one of the most lasting legends of all time.Editorials
Publishers Weekly -
A freewheeling reinvention of the Beowulf epic, Schaefer's debut is narrated by Musculus, a cynical, aging dwarf who looks back, in A.D. 695, on his adventures with his deceased heroic friend, Beowulf the Northman. Schaefer gives us an aloof Beowulf whose readily apparent physical gifts-golden shoulder-length hair, super physique-mask a radical intellect capable of breaking with tradition. He is a driven monster-slayer who lost both his parents by age three and needs to prove his invincibility. Grendel is here the fearsome Grundbar. Musculus, who goes nowhere without his pet raven, Amin, recounts his own early adventures at the court of the Byzantine emperor in Constantinople, how he was sold at the Kiev slave auction to a Greek merchant, his escape and roisterous exploits with Beowulf's brawling, wenching, ferocious band. He's an engaging narrator, blending a modern skepticism with a coarseness appropriate to the brutal medieval setting. Though sometimes ornamental and flowery, his voice is generally supple as it tells a richly textured tale that should appeal to fans of both fantasy and historical fiction. (Mar.)Dallas Morning News
Frank Schaefer lights the darkness....A stunning collection of marvelous characters who provide a grand, swashbuckling tale of courage and compassion fit for the shelf of any adventure-loving reader...."Kirkus Reviews
Visceral retelling of the Beowulf saga through the eyes of a dwarf: fast-paced action mixed with politically incorrect insights into Anglo-Saxon and Roman culture.Schaefer (The Scapeweed Goat, 1989) paints a Hieronymous Bosch-like portrait of the Western world at a fascinating juncture in history: the Roman Empire's final dissolution and the rise of the "barbarian" civilization of the Anglo-Saxons. The tale is told by Musculus the Dwarf, an elderly anchorite in a monastery ca. a.d. 695, putting paper to pen (as the book's archaic style would have it) to recount a life in which he appears, Zelig-like, at a number of critical events in history. First, he's Emperor Heraclius' crafty advisor in decadent Rome, a pampered sniffer-out of schemes and intrigues; then, sold into slavery among barbarians at the Emperor's death, he undergoes a series of tests—working as a galley slave, escaping death at the hands of murderous bandits, learning to survive like an animal in vast forests—until fate delivers him to the Geats and Beowulf. As he both witnesses and intervenes (a crucial suggestion about adding a keel to a Viking ship here, stabbing a monster in the back there), we see, smell, and recoil from the cruelty and brutality of the time even as we acquire a taste for blood vengeance and casual sex in the open mead-hall. Casting Beowulf as an Arnold Schwarzenegger obsessed with besting his own fears and childhood humiliations, the author shows how the Anglo-Saxon death-wish culture could seem, for all its vulgarity, like a breath of fresh air after the Roman decline.
A bright retelling of a still-vital myth, highly readable if subject to the usual banalities of sword-and-shield dialogue. With this as a text, perhaps Hollywood could coax Arnold back into a loincloth for a last hurrah.