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A review by tachyondecay
Sing the Four Quarters by Tanya Huff
adventurous
emotional
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Tanya Huff is an author who deserves, in my opinion, far more hype than she seems to receive. First, she’s Canadian (represent!), she’s queer (represent!), and she writes fantasy novels that are unapologetically queer and even sometimes unapologetically Canadian (re-pruh-sent!). I often describe her as an author I like but don’t love in the sense that I’ve seldom given her books a glowing review—Sing the Four Quarters is the first time I’ve rated one of her books more than three stars. Nevertheless, I respect her writing and her game.
Sing the Four Quarters takes place in the Kingdom of Shkoder, an unassuming place that just wants to mind its business, if it weren’t for those mean, nasty Cemandians breathing their expansionist breaths down their mountain pass. Annice is a bard, kind of a singing wizard, if you will. She was also a princess, but when her dad died and she joined up with the bards, her brother—now king—made her forswear her title, you know, like you do. Now she walks around the country, carrying tales, observing, and reporting back. But when she accidentally gets pregnant (another no-no, according to her brother the king) and the father ends up accused of treason, Annice needs to act fast.
Based on past experiences with Huff—I’ve liked her contemporary fantasy more than her secondary-world fantasy—I was nervous about reading Sing the Four Quarters. I picked it up from my used bookstore as an omnibus edition collected with the sequel, and it has sat on my shelf for a year or so. I was avoiding it. This book is from the nineties, just following The Fire’s Stone, which I had completely forgotten I had read! Nevertheless, my disappointment with what I viewed as clichés (though I suppose they weren’t yet, back when Huff wrote it) must have sunk deep into my bones, and the apprehension I felt twisting in my gut when I looked at this old-school cover stems from that.
Let me tell you: I could not have been more wrong. Sing the Four Quarters fucking rocks. I laughed, I cried, I cheered … this is what fantasy should be.
Right off in the first chapter, the first twenty pages, two things. First, the main character and a random, male side character she meets along the way both sit down to just … knit. Perfunctory like. Love it. Second, so many people are queer. Annice is bi or pan and living with another woman, and it’s just … there, on the page. Polyamorous too, I guess, given that Annice’s partner reacts not with anger when she learns Annice is pregnant but rather a rueful chuckle of, “This is what you get for sleeping with men!” and that sent me. I, of course, as an ace girlie, don’t see the appeal of sleeping with any gender, but as a sapphic-aligned girlie I am on Stasya’s side for sure. (The two of them and Pjerin form an excellent throuple, though!)
Seriously, after recent political events, it’s just such a breath of fresh air to be reading a fantasy novel from the 1995 that’s blatantly queernormative. I know this wasn’t Huff’s first time doing that, nor is she alone among her contemporaries. There’s something about seeing it during a time of backlash against queer people that is incredibly heartening. It isn’t “woke” or “diversity” to put queer people into genre fiction in 2025 because people were doing it thirty years ago. This, alone, would have endeared me to Huff forever.
Unlike, The Fire’s Stone, however, which apparently didn’t impress me, this story is actually … good?
I love the magic system. I thought I wouldn’t—ugh, singing wizards? How trite! How uninteresing! Again, I was just wrong. The bards are cool. The kigh are cool. In particular, I appreciate how Huff doesn’t bother with much exposition. Bards are basically elemental mages, they invoke spirits called kigh that are always mischievous, often mysterious, and so on. It’s an important dimension to the book but not the dimension; at its forefront, Sing the Four Quarters is a book about family, damn it, and Annice is Dominic Toretto.
I don’t want to go into spoilers. However, let me say that Huff makes a really significant plot choice early in the book that made me sit up and take notice. Annice basically has to go on the run—she’s committing treason by having this baby, and the baby daddy is also accused of treason for an unrelated thing (what bad luck). Let’s just say that it looks like Huff is setting up the pieces such that some characters will be her enemy. Almost immediately after she does that, however, she goes, “Haha, just kidding,” and those characters figure out it’s all a setup and start trying to help Annice as best they can from a distance. I love this. I hate plots based on shallow misunderstandings and miscommunication, and Huff neatly sidestepping this trope is a joy to see.
Annice’s ferocity is also a wonderful trait in a protagonist. I just love how she butts heads with Pjerin when they’re together. How fiercely she loves Stasya. How recalcitrant she is with Theron. She is such a firebrand of a woman, and I want to be her (minus the having-a-kid part). One of my number one complaints in fantasy novels featuring princesses as protagonists, even with female authors, is that the princess gets so little to do, has so little agency. That’s definitely not the case here.
The supporting cast is also delightful. Really, the only stinker was Otik, who begins as a semi-credible threat but quickly turns into a cartoonish oaf to be quickly dispatched. I don’t know if this is just a misfire on the part of Huff’s humour (which otherwise is resplendent yet unassuming in this story) or if I’m just reading him as campier than he should be. Either way, it’s not worth thinking that much about.
In the backdrop to this family squabble, of course, there is a far wider political plot that threatens the sovereignty of Shkoder. I don’t really care, to be honest. However, Huff does a good job of demonstrating how a single person can manipulate ignorant people into believing basically whatever—does this sound familiar?—and it was satisfying to see the villains of this piece dealt with.
At the climax of this story—because Annice is pregnant, and when a main character is pregnant, you know they never go into labour during a lull in the action—I found myself crying genuine tears of concern and joy at the same time. I was actively talking back to the book, cheering on Annice and her allies while also afraid for their survival. Somehow, Huff manages to dial up the tension and the stakes so gradually that I was like a lobster in a pot of water slow to come to a boil. I didn’t notice it was happening until saltwater was trickling down my cheeks even as I laughed at the same time.
Fiction should make you feel things. If that is the standard by which I measure books, then Sing the Four Quarters is an excellent book. I love when I’m proved wrong, when a book surprises me as thoroughly and expertly as this one did. Rather than feeling apprehensive about reading the next book, I am now excited. Hell yeah, Tanya Huff. You did good.
Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.
Sing the Four Quarters takes place in the Kingdom of Shkoder, an unassuming place that just wants to mind its business, if it weren’t for those mean, nasty Cemandians breathing their expansionist breaths down their mountain pass. Annice is a bard, kind of a singing wizard, if you will. She was also a princess, but when her dad died and she joined up with the bards, her brother—now king—made her forswear her title, you know, like you do. Now she walks around the country, carrying tales, observing, and reporting back. But when she accidentally gets pregnant (another no-no, according to her brother the king) and the father ends up accused of treason, Annice needs to act fast.
Based on past experiences with Huff—I’ve liked her contemporary fantasy more than her secondary-world fantasy—I was nervous about reading Sing the Four Quarters. I picked it up from my used bookstore as an omnibus edition collected with the sequel, and it has sat on my shelf for a year or so. I was avoiding it. This book is from the nineties, just following The Fire’s Stone, which I had completely forgotten I had read! Nevertheless, my disappointment with what I viewed as clichés (though I suppose they weren’t yet, back when Huff wrote it) must have sunk deep into my bones, and the apprehension I felt twisting in my gut when I looked at this old-school cover stems from that.
Let me tell you: I could not have been more wrong. Sing the Four Quarters fucking rocks. I laughed, I cried, I cheered … this is what fantasy should be.
Right off in the first chapter, the first twenty pages, two things. First, the main character and a random, male side character she meets along the way both sit down to just … knit. Perfunctory like. Love it. Second, so many people are queer. Annice is bi or pan and living with another woman, and it’s just … there, on the page. Polyamorous too, I guess, given that Annice’s partner reacts not with anger when she learns Annice is pregnant but rather a rueful chuckle of, “This is what you get for sleeping with men!” and that sent me. I, of course, as an ace girlie, don’t see the appeal of sleeping with any gender, but as a sapphic-aligned girlie I am on Stasya’s side for sure. (The two of them and Pjerin form an excellent throuple, though!)
Seriously, after recent political events, it’s just such a breath of fresh air to be reading a fantasy novel from the 1995 that’s blatantly queernormative. I know this wasn’t Huff’s first time doing that, nor is she alone among her contemporaries. There’s something about seeing it during a time of backlash against queer people that is incredibly heartening. It isn’t “woke” or “diversity” to put queer people into genre fiction in 2025 because people were doing it thirty years ago. This, alone, would have endeared me to Huff forever.
Unlike, The Fire’s Stone, however, which apparently didn’t impress me, this story is actually … good?
I love the magic system. I thought I wouldn’t—ugh, singing wizards? How trite! How uninteresing! Again, I was just wrong. The bards are cool. The kigh are cool. In particular, I appreciate how Huff doesn’t bother with much exposition. Bards are basically elemental mages, they invoke spirits called kigh that are always mischievous, often mysterious, and so on. It’s an important dimension to the book but not the dimension; at its forefront, Sing the Four Quarters is a book about family, damn it, and Annice is Dominic Toretto.
I don’t want to go into spoilers. However, let me say that Huff makes a really significant plot choice early in the book that made me sit up and take notice. Annice basically has to go on the run—she’s committing treason by having this baby, and the baby daddy is also accused of treason for an unrelated thing (what bad luck). Let’s just say that it looks like Huff is setting up the pieces such that some characters will be her enemy. Almost immediately after she does that, however, she goes, “Haha, just kidding,” and those characters figure out it’s all a setup and start trying to help Annice as best they can from a distance. I love this. I hate plots based on shallow misunderstandings and miscommunication, and Huff neatly sidestepping this trope is a joy to see.
Annice’s ferocity is also a wonderful trait in a protagonist. I just love how she butts heads with Pjerin when they’re together. How fiercely she loves Stasya. How recalcitrant she is with Theron. She is such a firebrand of a woman, and I want to be her (minus the having-a-kid part). One of my number one complaints in fantasy novels featuring princesses as protagonists, even with female authors, is that the princess gets so little to do, has so little agency. That’s definitely not the case here.
The supporting cast is also delightful. Really, the only stinker was Otik, who begins as a semi-credible threat but quickly turns into a cartoonish oaf to be quickly dispatched. I don’t know if this is just a misfire on the part of Huff’s humour (which otherwise is resplendent yet unassuming in this story) or if I’m just reading him as campier than he should be. Either way, it’s not worth thinking that much about.
In the backdrop to this family squabble, of course, there is a far wider political plot that threatens the sovereignty of Shkoder. I don’t really care, to be honest. However, Huff does a good job of demonstrating how a single person can manipulate ignorant people into believing basically whatever—does this sound familiar?—and it was satisfying to see the villains of this piece dealt with.
At the climax of this story—because Annice is pregnant, and when a main character is pregnant, you know they never go into labour during a lull in the action—I found myself crying genuine tears of concern and joy at the same time. I was actively talking back to the book, cheering on Annice and her allies while also afraid for their survival. Somehow, Huff manages to dial up the tension and the stakes so gradually that I was like a lobster in a pot of water slow to come to a boil. I didn’t notice it was happening until saltwater was trickling down my cheeks even as I laughed at the same time.
Fiction should make you feel things. If that is the standard by which I measure books, then Sing the Four Quarters is an excellent book. I love when I’m proved wrong, when a book surprises me as thoroughly and expertly as this one did. Rather than feeling apprehensive about reading the next book, I am now excited. Hell yeah, Tanya Huff. You did good.
Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.