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Songs of the Osirian #1
Songs of the Osirian
From the award winning author of Sir Laurence Dies, comes this epic fantasy tale of the Osirian return to Earth.
It was written ... beings known as Servants of Light appeared as gifts to Man. Their majesty unlike anything seen; their Songs so angelic a single melody turned barren soil fertile. They were worshiped and called Osirian. For years they shared knowledge, bringing peace and prosperity to mankind. But when an ancient evil awoke and corrupted the world, the Osirian swapped books for swords and led Man to war. Victory came at a price. The aftermath created disillusioned men and woman who angrily rejected their teachers, and in grief the Osirian disappeared. Their knowledge and wisdom lost to history. But they were all betrayed. The evil remained … Three-thousand years later, archaeologist Mary Wilson unwittingly assists its resurgence. But this time, the Songs of the Osirian are silent.
Songs of the Osirian was adapted from the short story, Songs of Beast, published by Media Bitch Literary Agency and Productions
Bonus short story "The Last of Us" by Rob James is included at the end of the book.
It was written ... beings known as Servants of Light appeared as gifts to Man. Their majesty unlike anything seen; their Songs so angelic a single melody turned barren soil fertile. They were worshiped and called Osirian. For years they shared knowledge, bringing peace and prosperity to mankind. But when an ancient evil awoke and corrupted the world, the Osirian swapped books for swords and led Man to war. Victory came at a price. The aftermath created disillusioned men and woman who angrily rejected their teachers, and in grief the Osirian disappeared. Their knowledge and wisdom lost to history. But they were all betrayed. The evil remained … Three-thousand years later, archaeologist Mary Wilson unwittingly assists its resurgence. But this time, the Songs of the Osirian are silent.
Songs of the Osirian was adapted from the short story, Songs of Beast, published by Media Bitch Literary Agency and Productions
Bonus short story "The Last of Us" by Rob James is included at the end of the book.
296 pages, Kindle Edition
Published July 30, 2016
25 people are currently reading
21 people want to read
About the author
Christopher D. Abbott
36 books42 followersChristopher is a Reader's Favorite award winning author and Star Trek Feature Writer.
Described by New York Times Bestseller Michael Jan Friedman as "an up-and-coming fantasy voice", and compared to Roger Zelazny's best work, Abbott's Songs of the Osirian series of works brings a bold re-telling of Ancient Egyptian mythology. Abbott presents a fresh view of deities we know, such as Horus, Osiris, and Anubis. He weaves the godlike magic through musical poetry, giving these wonderfully tragic and deeply flawed "gods" different perspective, all the while increasing their mysteriousness.
His Sherlock Holmes stories, published in the Watson Chronicles Series, have been recognised by readers and peers alike as faithfully authentic to the original Conan Doyle. In 2022, after publishing seven individual Watson Chronicle stories, Christopher teamed up with prolific authors Michael Jan Friedman and Aaron Rosenberg to add a collection of Holmes short stories to the series.
Christopher has published with Crazy8Press and written for major media outlets, including ScreenRant.
Described by New York Times Bestseller Michael Jan Friedman as "an up-and-coming fantasy voice", and compared to Roger Zelazny's best work, Abbott's Songs of the Osirian series of works brings a bold re-telling of Ancient Egyptian mythology. Abbott presents a fresh view of deities we know, such as Horus, Osiris, and Anubis. He weaves the godlike magic through musical poetry, giving these wonderfully tragic and deeply flawed "gods" different perspective, all the while increasing their mysteriousness.
His Sherlock Holmes stories, published in the Watson Chronicles Series, have been recognised by readers and peers alike as faithfully authentic to the original Conan Doyle. In 2022, after publishing seven individual Watson Chronicle stories, Christopher teamed up with prolific authors Michael Jan Friedman and Aaron Rosenberg to add a collection of Holmes short stories to the series.
Christopher has published with Crazy8Press and written for major media outlets, including ScreenRant.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
August 24, 2016
Christopher D. Abbott has deftly intertwined mythology, romance, betrayal, despair and hope in Songs of the Osirian. A story spanning the annals of human history, a story of evil vs good. His character creation is excellent, you feel empathy towards the characters on both sides of the divide. Why? Because they're so believable in the context of the story, Christopher has shown no bias, you get to see why the characters have / give justification for the acts that they have committed and go on to commit.
A well written first time outing in the fantasy/scifi novel genre, Songs of the Osirian presses all of the right buttons to ensure that the reader will not only enjoy reading this but will be anticipating the sequels release.
I have enjoyed reading Christopher's earlier works, I love a good mystery but in this departure from his usual fayre, he's taken his growing skills as a story teller to a whole new level.
A well written first time outing in the fantasy/scifi novel genre, Songs of the Osirian presses all of the right buttons to ensure that the reader will not only enjoy reading this but will be anticipating the sequels release.
I have enjoyed reading Christopher's earlier works, I love a good mystery but in this departure from his usual fayre, he's taken his growing skills as a story teller to a whole new level.
August 17, 2016
A fantastic page turner, once started I couldn't put it down. Character development is strong and I quickly found myself becoming very attached to some of the main cast. The pace of the story is quick (at times relentless!) which only helps to highlight the World shattering events the characters find themselves swept up within. I am a big fan of Fantasy and the alternate reality that Christopher builds is steeped in Ancient Egyptian mythology, rich and epic. Here's hoping for more please Christopher!
September 9, 2016
Not my usual choice of read but think this may have converted me, I couldn't put it down. Loved it and can't wait for the next book.
December 14, 2023
Oh no... I feel terrible rating the book 2 stars, because I hate being the one to drag down ratings...
I *would* give the book 4 stars for concept, because it's got a really neat concept, alike enough to high fantasy stories I've read before that I loved it, but absolutely unlike anything I've read before at the same time!
But unfortunately, the technical writing of the book and the way the story was presented really drag the rating down to 2 stars, or "It's okay" territory.
The good:
The concept of the "deities" of the universe is an almost 1-to-1 correspondence with Eru Illuvatar and the Ainur of Tolkien's works, so it was fairly simple to template what I knew of the Valar on to the Osirians.
From there, the book starts with known history-- Ancient Egypt-- but with a secret-forgotten-history bent to it. And right when I was feeling that it was perhaps a bit unlikely that all this secret history could have actually happened, the story goes WILDLY off the rails into "this ain't *My* Earth" territory that was wholly original and really made the book "fantasy" and not just "alt history with a bit of magic sprinkled in."
The bad:
I never felt like anyone was ever in any sort of mortal danger, even when one character would expressly inform another that they were *indeed* in mortal danger. Even when beaten or broken, characters suddenly found their extra "110%" to push through.
Conflicts that were written and we were told were a big deal were usually resolved within a few pages of the conflict being mentioned for the first time, leaving the "bigness" or stress of problem solving feeling forced or faked just for the drama of it. We are told about relationships developing between characters instead of being shown them developing naturally.
Conversation is also fairly forced at times. Characters alternate between paragraph long monologues to each other (in effect, to explain their feelings and motivations and what they are currently doing and to the reader instead of narrating the characters actually performing those actions or showing their emotions through their actions) and short witty banter and jokes that feel forced and jarring following the formal cant of the previous monologues.
The technical:
It is incredibly obvious that there is an entire developed world and mythos underlying this book. I get the feeling that whatever question I asked about the characters, world, history, or conflict, the author would have a well thought out and rational answer. It's ALL there. ...But it's under the surface and we don't get to see much of it.
It's also obvious that the author has an amazing mental image of exactly what each scene LOOKS like, and this book would probably be gorgeous if filmed for television. Unfortunately, much of that is lost through descriptions that boil down to "it looked beautiful." "It was the prettiest thing they'd ever heard." "It was scary." Being told how to feel about the descriptions allowed me, the reader, to envision things as I wanted to see them, but also left me feeling lacking because I was sure I wasn't actually envisioning what the Author himself was seeing, and I wanted to see what he was seeing very much.
Another review mentions how "biblical" the story feels, and I absolutely agree. About a third of my way through the book, I had to pause and re-calibrate how I was reading in order to grapple with the stylistic choices the author made while writing. While I can absolutely accept that the world of this story exists because it feels so *real*, the story itself does not have that same realness feeling.
I found that if I thought of the book as a bard's retelling of the tale, hundreds of years after the events had actually occurred where the "telling" of the story had morphed and been corrupted through no malicious means other than faulty memory and entropy, it was much better than reading it as if told by an omniscient being narrating factual events as they actually happened.
A faulty "retelling" of the story would account for the way the smaller conflicts are presented as "A conflict exists. Then it is solved." and glossed over without going into the blow-by-blow accounting of how the conflict was resolved. Those are small details that would have been dropped from the story over time. Events in the book are shortened into cliff notes, because that's what's easiest for a bard to memorize. Friendships and relationships between characters lack depth, because the depth of their friendships are unknown after so long, and the bard is just extrapolating from what history does show. Physical descriptions of things being "beautiful" or "scary" are how the original story was told, and the bard doesn't actually know what they looked like himself, because it was before he lived. And of course characters narrate to each other, telling their compatriots what's happening! Bards tell their story through a verbal format, and having your characters narrate part of the story gives a bit more depth to the narration than just listening to the bard drone on in one voice! A modern day retelling of the story would also account for how characters seem to go from formal, archaic register and rhythm into blatantly modern jokes and phrases. The bard ad libbed those lines, so of course they feel out of place!
Overall, I would recommend this book to people who enjoyed The Chronicles of Narnia and found The Lord of the Rings to be too dry and long. I suggest finding a friend with a smooth baritone voice, going to a little cottage pub on a foggy night, sitting in front of the hearth fire with a mug of your favorite drink, and listening to your friend read this book out loud.
I *would* give the book 4 stars for concept, because it's got a really neat concept, alike enough to high fantasy stories I've read before that I loved it, but absolutely unlike anything I've read before at the same time!
But unfortunately, the technical writing of the book and the way the story was presented really drag the rating down to 2 stars, or "It's okay" territory.
The good:
The concept of the "deities" of the universe is an almost 1-to-1 correspondence with Eru Illuvatar and the Ainur of Tolkien's works, so it was fairly simple to template what I knew of the Valar on to the Osirians.
From there, the book starts with known history-- Ancient Egypt-- but with a secret-forgotten-history bent to it. And right when I was feeling that it was perhaps a bit unlikely that all this secret history could have actually happened, the story goes WILDLY off the rails into "this ain't *My* Earth" territory that was wholly original and really made the book "fantasy" and not just "alt history with a bit of magic sprinkled in."
The bad:
I never felt like anyone was ever in any sort of mortal danger, even when one character would expressly inform another that they were *indeed* in mortal danger. Even when beaten or broken, characters suddenly found their extra "110%" to push through.
Conflicts that were written and we were told were a big deal were usually resolved within a few pages of the conflict being mentioned for the first time, leaving the "bigness" or stress of problem solving feeling forced or faked just for the drama of it. We are told about relationships developing between characters instead of being shown them developing naturally.
Conversation is also fairly forced at times. Characters alternate between paragraph long monologues to each other (in effect, to explain their feelings and motivations and what they are currently doing and to the reader instead of narrating the characters actually performing those actions or showing their emotions through their actions) and short witty banter and jokes that feel forced and jarring following the formal cant of the previous monologues.
The technical:
It is incredibly obvious that there is an entire developed world and mythos underlying this book. I get the feeling that whatever question I asked about the characters, world, history, or conflict, the author would have a well thought out and rational answer. It's ALL there. ...But it's under the surface and we don't get to see much of it.
It's also obvious that the author has an amazing mental image of exactly what each scene LOOKS like, and this book would probably be gorgeous if filmed for television. Unfortunately, much of that is lost through descriptions that boil down to "it looked beautiful." "It was the prettiest thing they'd ever heard." "It was scary." Being told how to feel about the descriptions allowed me, the reader, to envision things as I wanted to see them, but also left me feeling lacking because I was sure I wasn't actually envisioning what the Author himself was seeing, and I wanted to see what he was seeing very much.
Another review mentions how "biblical" the story feels, and I absolutely agree. About a third of my way through the book, I had to pause and re-calibrate how I was reading in order to grapple with the stylistic choices the author made while writing. While I can absolutely accept that the world of this story exists because it feels so *real*, the story itself does not have that same realness feeling.
I found that if I thought of the book as a bard's retelling of the tale, hundreds of years after the events had actually occurred where the "telling" of the story had morphed and been corrupted through no malicious means other than faulty memory and entropy, it was much better than reading it as if told by an omniscient being narrating factual events as they actually happened.
A faulty "retelling" of the story would account for the way the smaller conflicts are presented as "A conflict exists. Then it is solved." and glossed over without going into the blow-by-blow accounting of how the conflict was resolved. Those are small details that would have been dropped from the story over time. Events in the book are shortened into cliff notes, because that's what's easiest for a bard to memorize. Friendships and relationships between characters lack depth, because the depth of their friendships are unknown after so long, and the bard is just extrapolating from what history does show. Physical descriptions of things being "beautiful" or "scary" are how the original story was told, and the bard doesn't actually know what they looked like himself, because it was before he lived. And of course characters narrate to each other, telling their compatriots what's happening! Bards tell their story through a verbal format, and having your characters narrate part of the story gives a bit more depth to the narration than just listening to the bard drone on in one voice! A modern day retelling of the story would also account for how characters seem to go from formal, archaic register and rhythm into blatantly modern jokes and phrases. The bard ad libbed those lines, so of course they feel out of place!
Overall, I would recommend this book to people who enjoyed The Chronicles of Narnia and found The Lord of the Rings to be too dry and long. I suggest finding a friend with a smooth baritone voice, going to a little cottage pub on a foggy night, sitting in front of the hearth fire with a mug of your favorite drink, and listening to your friend read this book out loud.
August 4, 2018
Songs of The Osirian by Christopher D Abbott is an epic tale of good and evil. It is a tale of the enduring power of light in a world where darkness is relentless. I like the idea of a force for good quietly teaching men a better way through age after age of the rise and then fall of civilizations. There is a great foreword by Chase Masterson and I think Songs of Osirian will reach a lot of eager fans. And if a great novel and a great foreword are not enough for you then there is a bonus short story at the end of the book. The Last of Us by Rob James is a great tale too. Some great Christian allegory here.
What struck a chord for me as a reader was the almost biblical, end of days tones the writing in Song of The Osirian evoked. Christopher D. Abbott knows how to add a sense of drama and high consequence to his clashes between the beasts and the Osirian. The sense of the fall of great civilizations was very strong but more importantly, the sense that goodness endures was always present too. Complex characters and a plot leading to an epic battle between Good and Evil will make Songs of The Osirian a must read for fans of epic fantasy everywhere. I especially liked the conversations and scenes where the Beast gives his side of the story. He is a little more than just evil incarnate and feels wronged by God and the forces of good.
What struck a chord for me as a reader was the almost biblical, end of days tones the writing in Song of The Osirian evoked. Christopher D. Abbott knows how to add a sense of drama and high consequence to his clashes between the beasts and the Osirian. The sense of the fall of great civilizations was very strong but more importantly, the sense that goodness endures was always present too. Complex characters and a plot leading to an epic battle between Good and Evil will make Songs of The Osirian a must read for fans of epic fantasy everywhere. I especially liked the conversations and scenes where the Beast gives his side of the story. He is a little more than just evil incarnate and feels wronged by God and the forces of good.
October 21, 2016
This is definitely not a genre I tend to pick up on my own, but when a friend asked me to beta read, I couldn't resist. It took a while for me to get through, partially because I was reading the ebook, not my usual format either! It did start to grow on me. Fascinating how, during this election season, so many stories seem to be breaking down to good vs. evil! I shall have to read the next book--I must know what happens next!
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews