Potheads, furry'ism and minors being treated like adults, sexually.
If you're a pervert, you'll love this book.
If you hate pathetic characters, you won't love this book.
oh yeah, gay unicorns. Come on!
Foster completely bombed this. ( )

Season of the Spellsong is an Omnibus of 3 books - "Spellsinger", "The Hour of the Gate", and "The Day of Dissonance". They follow the story of "Jon-Tom", a janitor and band member who gets accidentally transported by Clothahump the Wizard onto a Medieval world filled with anthropomorphic animals. Jon-Tom finds out, largely by accident, that he can cast spells by playing a guitar-like instrument and singing - making him the Spellsinger of the title.

Foster attempts to depict a fairly nasty and violent world while trying to keep the tone light, and mostly succeeds; the humor is never laugh-out-loud funny but works and rarely missteps, and the world still feels dangerous. Partly this is done through a largely episodic plot structure, although this also leads to some unconvincing character development and dropped plot threads.

"Spellsinger" and "Hour of the Gate" were originally published as one volume, and it looks like they were written that way. Judged separately, "Spellsinger" is the better novel; the plot is more fluid, the characters get better development and the world is more cohesive. Even the bizarre Marxist dragon Falameezar works. In "Hour of the Gate" the flaws of the episodic structure show; the core of the book isn't much more than a travelogue. The romantic relationships that started in the first volume are resolved, but they're unconvincing as they all but disappeared for most of the second book before showing up at the climax. One character is introduced for a plot reason, then strung along with no purpose; Mudge, who was a key character in "Spellsinger", becomes a complete afterthought.

"The Day of Dissonance" is a separate book, and uses Jon-Tom's Spellsinging (relatively rare in the first two) much more effectively. The only returning character - after a brief time with Clothahump - is Mudge; the rest of the characters are new. Foster fumbles around with relationships again; romantic tension is setup between Jon-Tom and Roseroar the tiger, then dropped out of the blue. Similarly to the Spellsinger/Hour of the Gate combination, the development and payoffs of the book are weakend by the episodic nature. The episodes work better here than in "Hour of the Gate" however, and even the book's weakest passage - a scene at a fairy town - has a disturbingly funny exchange between the head fairy and Folly, a human girl picked up from a pirate ship.

Season of the Spellsong is a good pickup if you're a fan of comic fantasy or anthropomorphic fiction, and a capable one otherwise, even if it never quite lives up to its premise. ( )