Don't listen to the hype (The Windsinger - William Nicholson)

Member Name: Grauppi

Product:	The Windsinger - William Nicholson
Date:	31/10/01 (640 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Easy to read

Disadvantages: Boring, Predictable, Seriously lightweight

Have you ever known someone who recommends books and seems to know an AWFUL lot about them, only to discover they have NEVER read the books they harp on about?

I do. He is a bit of a trivia-king when it comes to movies and books, giving the impression that he is seriously well-read. However, in reality he is merely well-read in reviews. What happens when someone recommends a book that turns out to be rubbish? Well, you persevere for a start – well maybe, and you persevere because you think this friend is well-read and knows a good book when they read one. So I read The Wind Singer by William Nicholson all the way through, continually hoping it would improve.

I read the Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman, and some reviewers have compared The Wind Singer to Northern Lights (the first in the Dark Materials Trilogy). This, along with comments such as ‘think of Star Wars and then some’ on the back cover of the book got me all excited about The Wind Singer.

However, this book is seriously light-weight. There are several continuity errors which are frustrating and the morals of the story (which are irritatingly abundant) are shamelessly explicit. The prose is easy to read, but dull and lifeless. The personalities of the main characters are thin and undeveloped. The WindSinger is full of characters that you think may have some potential, but you never find out anything about them, you don’t know their reasons for behaving in certain ways and they have no history.

When I was at school I wrote a story where these kids had an adventure, they were being chased and they kept getting away in the nick of time, kept out-doing the baddies with the weakest of plans and kept succeeding over and over again by pure luck. My English teacher, Mr Owen, gave me a ‘B’ for that story, but wrote at the bottom of my work that the story didn’t work because the situations were too contrived. This, he said made the
outcome predictable and contributed to the continual lack of suspense throughout. I was only twelve at the time. If my English said that to me now I would say “but Mr. Nicholson did that in The Wind Singer and he made a lot of money out of it”.

So what happens in the book. Okay. The three main characters are teenagers, Kestral and Bowman Hath, who are twins and their grubby, seemingly retarded friend, Mumpo. They escape from their home city of Aramanth where one’s lifestyle is determined by how well your family does in exams. If your family score is low you have to live in to a part of the city that ain’t so nice, and you can only wear, for example, grey clothes, and so on. The Hath family as a whole dislike this system and Kestral in particular rebels. Following repeated acts of rebellion she is carted off to be incarcerated. But she escapes (too easily), and she and Bowman, followed by Mumpo escape into the underground world of the Mudpeople. Here they nearly drown in the mud (if only – the book would have been far shorter), but are saved in the nick of time by a Mud-bloke. After a little time there they venture out on to the plains where they are captured by a tribe of people called Omchaka (what are they doing there? Don’t know). They are sentenced to death, but escape (YAWN) very easily and end up going through a forest where nothing much happens. Every now and again these little children who are very ‘old’ physically, and pretty creepy, turn up and try to drain our three heroes of their youth and strenth – Why? Don’t know. Then they walk through a ‘wall of fire’ and…well if by this point you are still interested, I suggest you read the book.

So what is the purpose of these three adventurers. Their quest is for the ‘voice’ of the Windsinger. The Windsinger is a bit like a large sculpture, which turns in the wind, in Aramanth,. It has a piece missing: an
‘S’ shaped silver pendant which, when slotted into the Windsinger will make it ‘sing’ and restore peace and equilibrium to Aramanth. Inevitably it all works out, they get the voice, return to Aramanth (on their return journey they are captured by the Ombaraka and are sentenced to death by them too, but guess what? They are saved in the nick of time). The silver voice is slotted into the Windsinger, everyone suddenly realises the error of their ways and realises the exams are a bad idea.

We never find out why the Windsinger works in this way, we never discover who those little old people are, the actions of many of the characters is bizarre, incredulous and never explained. By the end of the book you will have a hundred questions about various characters and situations, that have not been answered. The blessing is, you won’t care!

You cannot compare this book to Pullman’s Dark Materials, and it lacks the sophistication of the Harry Potter books. And quite frankly, I think Mr. Owen would only give it a ‘C’ if Nicholson submitted it for his English homework.

Summary: