Songs of the Dead

De: Brandon Sanderson, Peter Orullian

Narrado por: Luke Daniels

The instant national bestseller about a London rocker is faced with a life-or-death choice when he realizes that a league of necromancers are the only ones keeping London safe in this music-infused fantasy cowritten by #1 New York Times bestselling author Brandon Sanderson along with author-musician Peter Orullian.

Jack Solomon is walking home with his mentor Henry, owner of the iconic London rock club The Iron Horse, after another night when they are both shot dead by an assassin painted in corpse makeup. When Jack wakes up on the street, somehow alive, yet without Henry, he has found himself in a London where an ancient league of necromancers known as thanatists are entering a civil war, and he’s now at the center of it.

Gathering his friends at the Iron Horse, Jack is on a crash course to learn how to be a thanatist and navigate the Strata—living eras of the past sprawling beneath today's London—in order to win this fight. What is revealed is that a slow revolution to rewrite history to favor the near-forgotten dead, through music, is coming to a boil, and the Iron Horse is essential to keep

London safe.

#1 New York Times bestselling author Brandon Sanderson has partnered with heavy metal musician and fellow fantasy author Peter Orullian to create a unique contemporary fantasy series, The Strata Wars, lifting the veil to a hidden magical world where musical history and necromantic magic is intertwined, and has been for centuries.

Includes an exclusive excerpt of an original song written by Peter Orullian and performed by Peter Orullian and Luke Daniels!

Okay

I enjoyed listening to this but found myself turning it off more often then other audiobooks. I’m not entirely sure why specifically.

Not a traditional Brandon Sanderson book, not a bad thing, but not his normal fare.

It starts off really, really slow, but it does eventually start to pick up steam and get better. About midway through the book, I started to enjoy it. Traditionally, Brandon Sanderson's books are page-turners from page one, but this one was not so much.

Cool in theory

As always, Brandon Sanderson has some of the best magic systems in his books. This one would have been great but I feel like the rest of the story was too rushed.. hard to describe without writing spoilers. The main character just.. accepts being essentially isakai'd, and things fast forward from there?

The narration is okay. Usually I listen on 1.5 but this one seemed too fast for that, but too slow for 1.2. Narrator does a decent job at voices, at first I thought it was Jeff Hays.

I'm almost done listening but it's felt like a slog. I probably won't continue the series if Brandon isn't writing them.

Like RPO but for Metal, with Zombies and History?

Overall - I'd recommend this title if you're into metal, are an artist looking to resonate with other creators, casually like London history, or are a hardcore Sanderson fan looking for your next fix.

This was a really interesting novel, with a plot far from what I expected having read the admittedly very brief updates on the title over the years in State of Sanderson posts. The worldbuilding is good, and I expect it will get better with each sequel. Unlike some of the other shorter non-Cosmere titles this one felt like less of a complete story on its own and more like the start of something bigger. There was a clear climax and close to the plot, but we're left with more questions than answers.

The "magic" system got built out a decent amount, but in the end I still didn't feel like I had a solid grasp on the basics of it compared to other titles by Sanderson or Orullian. Perhaps I'm spoiled, since in reading all of Sanderson's titles and Orullian's Vault of Heaven series what I'm used to is extremely detailed and well explained magic lore. This book, being the first in a series and with a multitude of different things going on in its own lore, felt like it was a bit shallow on some explanations even while others were extensive. Perhaps it was just a matter of the novel doing a lot of things all at once and simply not having enough space in the novel for the same depth as usual, which we'll see developed in future titles.

The final thing worth noting is that this novel feels a bit like Ready Player One but for heavy metal / punk rock instead of gaming. I'm not into metal or punk much at all, so I probably missed a ton of clever references that would have enhanced the story quite a bit. I am into art, so the torment of creating and expression the MC goes through I get, but if you're not a creative type I could see that also landing a bit flat with people, so consider that when buying.

Now two things I am very into - history and London history in particular - made this more interesting, but again the novel is trying to so many things that those aspects, while very interesting and central to the plot, felt a little underdeveloped. Again, I look forward to sequels to pick up where Songs of the Dead leaves off.

Doesn't feel like a brando sando world

Not sure how involved Sanderson was, but it doesn't seem like he was as involved as he should have been. The world building was more handwavey than I expect from things with his name on them.

Story felt like another one of those "author gets therapy through his self insert" kinda books. They're fun, but the MC is no Kaladin.