I read this series for the first time as a teenager, and I have to note with some sadness that I think it's definitely lost stars for me as an adult reader.

The premise of the Spellsinger series is that an aspiring singer/lawyer (Jon-Tom) is pulled into an alternative universe where all animals except lizards can talk and think and he has magical powers as a spellsinger. But since all he knows are rock songs from our western world, his results are occasionally unpredicatable.

In this book, Jon-Tom has to go searching for medicine for his mentor Clothahump. On the way he picks up a 7-foot high white tiger, his irascable companion Mudge, and a teenage street kid named Folly. Hilarity and mayhem ensues.

The spellsinger books are light on the realism and heavy on the humor. Note that many of the jokes are dependent on knowing pop culture from the 80s. I laughed at the Def Leppard jokes. Current teens may not get them.

There is a rather ludicrous sense of majesty surrounding the Spellsinger series. A sometimes comic, sometimes morbid world where the imagination of one obvious rock fan can proceed uninhibited by the averages of fantasy guidelines. Mr. Foster, accidently, I believe, created a bit of a masterpiece when he sculpted the first of the Spellsinger series,which has, all the way through it's last installment, Chorus Skating, supplied new and various dishes for those travelers on this world which the offer never bothers to identify. This book, in particular, captures the sheer ridiculousness and fun at the heart of the Spellsinger series; it's a kind of jovial feeling you sense that the characters would partake of as well, were they confronted with this astounding piece of literature. Now, all I want to know is...will there be any more? : ) I can only pray and hope!

There are a few lyrics to the Eagle's 'Take it Easy' that would fit this book: the love of Jon-Tom's life has gotten cold feet and run off; he tries to get himself out of a jam and conjures up a seven foot tigress that's a little bit sweet on him; and he meets a pretty girl that really wants to be his friend - too bad she's jailbait! And to top it all off, Mudge gets into trouble with the ladies at every turn.

Prolific SF writer Alan Dean Foster wraps up the adventures of the stranded Ethan Fortune and Suka September on the ice planet of Tran-ky-ky in a nice little package for fans of the series. Turns out the thawing of the ice at the equator Ethan saw in the second book (Mission to Moulkin) was not natural at all, someone is actually attempting to thaw out the planet. That could mean possible extinction for the Tran, which is unexceptable to Fortune and September. They and their Tran friends head out on the Slanderscree to see that the process is stopped, permanently. A wonderful ending to a wonderful series, highly recommended.

The finale of the Icerigger series does not have quite the adventure of the other two and harbors a pretty silly villain and plot. None-the-less, anyone reading Icerigger and Mission to Moulokin will have to read Deluge Drivers, if only to spend the last few minutes available with our new friends the Tran. There is definitely something wonderful and personal about this series. The characters are very rich and you really want to know more about them and share in their adventures.

This was the final book in this trilogy, and I enjoyed it as much as the rest. It kept my interest through the whole series. Foster gripped me in the drama of the Ice world I came to admire in the first two books, only now the entire planet was now in serious danger. The ultimate global warming destroying the planet and miraculously being saved by rouge adventuring heroes kind of story. This series made me a Foster fan. If you enjoyed the Flinx series, you will really enjoy this one!

For Love Of Mother-Not is Flinx's first adventure (chronologically in Flinx's life). Foster goes back in time to Flinx's adoption by Mother Mastiff, his discovery of Pip, the explaination for the source of Flinx's Talent (a shadowy group of scientists monkeying around with human genes to create a "super-human"). As far as Flinx adventures go, this one is right on target. Mother-Not is also a useful history for those wanting to read the entire Flinx series.

I just love about 95% of books by this author. I finally decided to see if I could find the first book in probably his most popular series.

Mother Mastif didn't know what stopped her on the way to her shop and drew her to a slave auction. Quite without meaning to she buys a boy named Flix who has some..rather interesting abilities. Then things get really interesting as the book goes on.

My impression what I love most about this series, (other then the action and humor that drip from every page) are the names of the charecters.

With names like Mother Mastif
Flix
Pip
My personal favorite an ex-solider named Makes Peace you know that you are in for a treat.

I know that this sounds quiche but this not typical science fiction. I don't give just any old science fiction a 5 star review it has to be really really good. But to Quote Lavar Buurton "Don't just take my word for it". Go out and get yourself a copy of this book.

This book is not considered to be an execpttional book but I disagree it sets the background for a very imaginitive series.

In all honesty, I found this book to be badly written and less than compelling. The dialogue between the characters, particularly that between the adults and the children (a sixteen-year old girl and ten-year old boy), was forced and often painfully artificial. The family is traveling to Las Vegas in a motor home because the father thinks a trip through the desert will be educational for his kids. They naturally are bored out of their minds. Then they pick up a hitchhiker, a girl who calls herself Mouse, who tells them that she is a millennium-old singer who must find her way to the Spinner and sing to him in order to keep reality from falling apart. The minions of Evil and Chaos remain dangerously close behind them as they journey through a myriad of horrible reality threads on their way to the Vanishing Point where the Spinner resides. Along the way, they pick up the janitor from Hell (literally) and a dwarfish chef who wandered into a post-Apocalyptic Salt Lake City. Will the group survive and get Mouse to the Spinner before reality snaps? Does the reader even care?

When Foster is describing action and crisis events, he does a pretty good job. Unfortunately, there are far too many sections of dialogue which ruin the whole book. The communication between the parents and kids in particular is wooden; the author seems to be trying too hard to mimic real intergenerational communication. The adults, especially the father, behave irrationally at times. One minute the father is threatening to dump Mouse on the side of the road, and the next he is ogling her beauty and promising to stay with her until the end. Whenever the family escapes one crisis, everyone behaves as if everything is normal again; when their son disappears, they forget about him rather quickly and even manage to go to sleep that night. The father constantly tells us how brave he is for having started his own business, yet he bemoans his own rampant cowardice just as often. Foster even seems to forget or ignore important plot points--for example, the father grows four extra arms at one point, and then the topic is never addressed again.

The story itself is weak enough without being cursed with such bad characterization and dialogue. I was unable to like a single character, and I could not help but wince during several sections as I watched these puppetlike characters go about their mission. I know that Foster has written and sold many books, but bad is the only word I can use to describe To the Vanishing Point.

This is my second ADF book. In both cases it appears that Mr. Foster starts out with a great idea...then runs out of steam half way through and flounders about until he reaches his page quota for the publisher.

To The Vanishing Point is a book in the grand penny press tradition of "write 'em cheap & write 'em fast."

The books is a good escape from reality tale. The characters are interesting and the writing style is intriguing. Note...the book did not make it into the mass paperback. The work is a little short of compelling. But if you are in the mood to read a plotless book totally detached from the world, you will enjoy getting close to the vanishing point.

Don't buy the book, if you are looking for more. I would not put it in a recommendation list.

Mr. Foster has an incredible talent to mix sci-fi/ Fantasy with humor. Who else could write about taking a drive through hell!

I read the other books in the Flinx series years ago and enjoyed them. This one was only fair-to-middlin'.

The characters seems wooden and two-dimensional. The plot line was predictable and didn't seem to have much content. The emotional communication portion was overdone and a fairly tedious. There just wasn't a lot there.

Perhaps it's just my tastes have changed...I'll have to go re-read Tar-Aiym and Mother Not to see...but this one just seemed a bit pro forma.

Finx in Flux is probably the most polished Flinx book. Clearly Foster learned a little more about writing between this one and the last (The End of the Matter). This is another direct sequel in which we find Flinx rescueing a beautiful gengineer (genetic engineer) who is under assault by eco-terrorists. The character development in Flinx in Flux is much richer than the other Flinx books, but what really set this one apart (for me) was the dramatic conclusion where Flinx learns of the existence of a great malevelolence, perhaps great enough to destroy the entire universe. Sadly, that is no delved into very deeply, instead leaving that open for another novel.

I just finished re-reading the book again for the umpteenth time. As always it was a great read, I really enjoy the Flinx series in the common wealth. Flinx is such an interesting character to watch develop. Just a note as to the comments below that the author is not going to be writing any more Flinx novels, that is untrue. Another one will be out latter this year(2000), or early next (It is titled Reunion).

[...] In a word, this book is utter tripe. The plot is trivialand has large gaping holes in it. I've read many of his other booksand loved them, but this reads more like a first draft than a finalproduct. It's hard to believe that Alan Dean Foster would put his nameto this work. [...]

With all due respect to Mr. Foster, don't buythis book. [...]

If you approach this book as mindless entertainment you probably won't be terribly disappointed. Of course, neither will you be wholly satisfied. The book has an interesting premise but one that is perhaps impossible to deliver on fully.

The main character, Kees van Loo-Macklin is the most brilliant, ruthless human the known galaxy has ever dealt with. It is, of course, very difficult for an author to realistically portray characters who are smarter than themselves. Foster tries to get around this by rarely having Loo-Macklin in the narrative. Instead, most of the story is told from the viewpoint of the one alien who devotes his entire life to trying to understand Loo-Macklin. This has the unfortunate effect of making the alien Nuel seem more human than Loo-Macklin. So not only does the author seem unable to realistically portray Loo-Macklin, he further disappoints by giving us an alien that doesn't feel very alien.

The removal of Loo-Macklin from the main narrative, while understandable both because of the difficulties of accurately portraying such a supposedly brilliant and ruthless person and in an attempt to keep him as mysterious to the reader as he is supposed to be to the rest of the universe, ends up being the biggest problem with the book. The reader is simply left with very little reason to accept both Loo-Macklin's brilliance and motivation other than the author tells us so. The final denouement when the alien gets Loo-Macklin to answer the question, "Why?" ends up feeling, although not quite as empty and trite as Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man, not much better, either. Without having critical insight into Loo-Macklin a great many of the choices he makes don't make a whole lot of sense, even in retrospect.

One final complaint: the plotting was a little TOO pat. Loo-Macklin has schemes within schemes within schemes and they all seem to work out perfectly. It would have been nice to once, just once, have seen his first plan fail and have backup plans come into play. It would have been so much more impressive if Loo-Macklin's final scheme were realized even in the face of errors along the way.

I've liked this book since I first read it, 10 year ago, and I still find myself picking it up and re-reading it again and again. The flow of the plot is simply to absorbing to put it down, and the complex plans made by the main character amaze me afresh every time. I've read this book so often, and lent it to so many people, that my first copy fell apart. So I got another one ;-)

As a big fan of Flinx, especially his earnestness, I looked forwarded to following his growth in Foster's second Flinx book. Sadly, Flinx is less than a minor character in this very confused tale. Bloodhype is (oddly enough) actually a story about an alien intelligence so powerful it devours all life on planets it attacks and is a threat to the entire galaxy. Mixed in the story is also some unsavory drug dealers who deal in Bloodhype, a kinda futuristic crack that gets you addicted after one dose and you will die without another. Still, the last 80 pages or so made it actually worth finishing and possibly made the whole book worth reading.

This book is an interesting tie-in book to the Flinx series. It is enjoyable to see Flinx largely from outside his POV for almost the entire time he appears in this novel (the latter half). I found it to be a nice contrast to the 'hardcore Flinx' novels. The main characters are both deadly serious and lightheartedly silly. A strange combo that works well and provides a constant stream of banter between the main characters.

In response to some of the other reviews below...

While Flinx's adventures in this story seem to be forgotten in the next book (the timeline at the end of 'Flinx in Flux' places the Vom/Guardian event _AFTER_ the 'FiF' events), I have hope that there is a reason for this that will be revealed later in the series. I say this because in each novel, Flinx is forced to grow and to develop his mysterious Talent in some way. As this happens more pieces are put into place regarding his destiny and the sheaf of other ongoing plotlines that Foster weaves in.

What both frustrates me (mildly) and yet draws me to the next book, is the fact that each time he aquires some new aspect of his Talent, he seems to forget he can do that particuar thing in subsequent novels. (i.e. the offensive capability he uses at the end of Flinx in Flux is never even mentioned in "Mid-Flinx," even when he is in deadly danger and would most certainly have at least considered using it.) The pattern is set in the (timeline-wise) first novel "For Love of Mother Not" when Flix experiences a haeadache and amnesia after he mysteriously resuces himself from the middle of a firefight... destroying a building in the process.

Either Foster is a schitzo or there is a deliberate pattern to this. I trust it is a pattern.. and that there is a reason for it... one that will be revealed and make sense. If that is so, I feel confident that the Vom, the Guardian, & Flinx's participation in the battle from this novel will fit into that pattern. I point to the final communication between Flinx and the Guardian for an enticing possibility.

I just hope Foster does not string this out too long. Too much frustration and I'll quit being interested in buying. Like I did with X-Files after a few years.

But for now I am content to read and enjoy the unfolding story of Flinx.

Dear Mr. Foster, WE NEED MORE FLINX! NOW! heheh

This is a truly well done novel. No, Flinx is not the only character in this book, but he is the main character. In response to a previous review, I think he is totally in character. I read this novel when it was brand new (I think I was twelve at the time) and saw the series evolve. This is truly an entertaining read, I've read it many, many times. I cannot but say that you will not be disappointed with this book, unlees you happen to be that "Reader from California". (See lame review below) :) Enjoy!

CYBER WAY is one of those rare science-fiction novels that, while not being a pathbreaking contribution to the genre, well repays rereading.

It fuses the kind of mystery pioneered by Tony Hillerman (in which Navaho culture is central to the plot and most of the cast is Navaho) with cutting-edge science fiction dealing with cyberspace. The MacGuffin that drives the plot is not merely a throwaway -- instead, it is central to the action and plausibly, chillingly developed.

There are a few holes -- at first, the Navaho detective treats his out-of-town white-bread Floridian colleague with surface good humor and respect but with an undercurrent of impatience and condescension that is never really explained -- but you forget about them after a while.

I wish that Alan Dean Foster would write another novel or two about Paul Ooljee and Vernon Moody.

This book's a hoot. It is the sci fi version of the murder on the rez' genre (pioneered by Tony Hillerman.) The book takes place in the not to distance future. The Navajo Indian reservation is now a haven for hi-tech firms (mostly Asian) seeking skilled labor and tax havens.

Although the Dineh have pretty much abandonned the ancient superstition...it turns out that there's something funky going on with the sand paintings. The cops in the book get to explore the sand paintings, Navajo culture and computer technology and more.

As mentioned in another review. The book is not well written. The characters are weak, and the author never really develops the plot or the symbology in the sand paintings. I really wish the author or editors had taken the time to turn this fantastic idea into a block buster.

But if you are willing to overlook the faults, the book is an absolute riot. The concept behind the books is so strong that I give it a five star rating despite the poor writing

doo ahashyaa da

This book was a slow starter for a few chapters but became very interesting later on. The plot revolves around a near future detective and an advanced internet for law enforcement. It then incorporates the idea that Navaho sand paintings and associated chants are an aural real world access to an N Dimensional data base left by past visitors to earth. If your interested in philosophy - American Indian history - or computers this is for you. It approaches Colin Wilsons Philosophers Stone in some ways

Having travelled in remote areas of PNG three times in the last ten years, I looked forward to this book touted as adventure in the real PNG. There should be more fiction and nonfiction written about this incredible country. To my disappointment, it turned out to be a sort of Indiana Jones meets Tobias Schneebaum. Yes, read it as a good adventure, but then go elsewhere to learn about PNG, its people, and its natural history. The picture presented here reminds me of the ramblings of disruntled expats .

Alan is another author that I read as a teenager. I distinctly remember reading all the Pip and Flinx novels.

Alan does not however just write science fiction, this was a more standard adventure story, along the lines of Clive Cussler. Your usual moral tale, obsession, lust, priorities, betrayal, death, murder and most of all gold. All set in PNG, Papua New Guinea. Foster as usual turns a fine tale that is entertaining and educational.

One striking thing about this book is the visceral sense of detail that Foster paints of PNG. I have read several books on polar exploration and as harsh and stark as the artic environment, PNG seems so in the opposite direction. Where the land of ice and snow are a dearth of life and variety, New Guinea is an overwhelming explosion of life. Where the environment threatens to kill you just as quickly.

...

Most people know Alan Dean Foster as a prolific science fiction writer with a consistently high quality level. A smaller group of readers know that he is also capable of great imaginative fantasy, often rooted in exotic settings and myths. The smallest group of all knows that he is an almost compulsive world traveler with keen observational skills and an ability to turn what he sees into eminently readable fiction.

"Primal Shadows," Foster's latest book is set in Papua New Guinea (hereafter referred to as PNG). Before reading this book all I knew about PNG was that Michael Rockefeller disappeared mysteriously there. Foster draws such a fine picture of this country that you almost lose sight of the story. From lackadaisical Port Moresby to the huge mountains of the West Highland and then back down again through extended marshland where sometimes rivers flow one way and sometimes they go the other, Foster brings the land and it's people to life. And the most amazing collection of mammals, insects, and reptiles.

Really, due to the rainforest climate of much of the country, the natural life of PNG always seems to be the biggest, or the meanest, or the deadliest in the world. From the 3 pound quoll which has the temperament of a rabid cuisinart (and eating habits to match) to the lawyer vine which, once it grabs you, never lets you go, the environment seems to conspire to shorten the life of the average traveler. To make matters worse the indigenous tribes are often in conflict with each other and there are rumors of cannibalism.

Into this welcoming land comes Steven Bohannon, an American who is fleeing from his past and has circled most of the globe. Upon arrival in Port Moresby, Bohannon is attracted to a beautiful woman and discovers the next morning that she (Tai Tennison), all his money, and his wallet have disappeared. Unlike most travelers, who would give up, Bohannon becomes fixated on tracking Tai down. He befriends Sorley McCracken, who knows Tai and they head into upcountry PNG. The quest takes them from one remarkable adventure to another even more hair raising. Bohannon becomes more and more determined with each narrow escape, and McCracken tries ever harder to talk Bohannon out of his quest.

Finally they discover that Tai has headed into the worst mountains in PNG after adventurer Ragnarok Stenhammer. Bohannon manages to hitch a ride from a crazy helicopter pilot and drags McCracken into a confrontation in the complete isolation of Mt. Yogonda. Stenhammer is seeking gold in the mountains and Bohannon is quickly absorbed into the quest. I leave you to imagine their adventures and a trip back to civilization which the equal of Clive Cussler's most imaginative tales

It says quite a bit about Foster's skill with writing that I like "Primal Shadows," which is in a genre that normally doesn't interest me. Readers who do love a pure adventure story will adore this tale. All of the main characters are engaging, and the bit players have gemlike parts. This is a classic adventure story and a dynamic, exciting read. And it is a beautiful introduction to one of the most unusual countries in the world.

Marc Ruby - for The Mystery Reader

When a powerful wizard is destroyed during a war, his burial ashes transform his pets into human form. They must then travel into a rainbow in search of white light, in order to break a curse placed over the land.

As usual Alan Dean Foster has a vivid imagination and manages to think up some very interesting and unique characters/worlds. His writing is good, and I enjoyed the characterization of the six animals. I found this particular story, however, to be a bit slow and continued reading the book just to finish it.

Its just what you expect from Mr. Foster's book's. Fun, exciting, easy reading. If you liked Spellsinger, you will like this.

I really liked this book. It was great fun and showed imagination. The cover is what caught my eye.