Tailchaser's Song

by Tad Williams

Meet Fritti Tailchaser, a ginger tom cat of rare courage and curiosity, a born survivor in a world of heroes and villains, of powerful feline gods and whiskery legends about those strange furless, erect creatures called M’an.

“The hour of Unfolding Dark had begun, and the rooftop where Tailchaser lay was smothered in shadow. He was deep in a dream of leaping and flying when he felt an unusual tingling in his whiskers. Fritti Tailchaser, hunterchild of the Folk, came suddenly awake and sniffed the air. Ears pricked and whiskers flared straight, he sifted the evening breeze. Nothing unusual. Then what had awakened him? Pondering, he splayed his claws and began a spine-limbering stretch that finally ended at the tip of his reddish tail.”

Join Tailchaser on his magical quest to rescue his catfriend Hushpad on a quest that will take him all the way to cat hell and beyond.

Genres: Fantasy, Fiction, Animals, Cats, Young Adult, Science Fiction Fantasy, Animal Fiction

375 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1985

About the author

Tad Williams is a California-based fantasy superstar. His genre-creating (and genre-busting) books have sold tens of millions worldwide, in twenty-five languages. His considerable output of epic fantasy and science fiction book-series, stories of all kinds, urban fantasy novels, comics, scripts, etc., have strongly influenced a generation of writers: the ‘Otherland’ epic relaunches June 2018 as an MMO on steam.com. Tad is currently immersed in the creation of ‘The Last King of Osten Ard’, planned as a trilogy with two intermediary novels. He, his family and his animals live in the Santa Cruz mountains in a suitably strange and beautiful house. @tadwilliams @mrstad

Reviews

[karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

i am a book thief.

this is not to say that i steal books from bookstores or libraries (although i considered performing a superheist at the morgan to get all their byron books with his notes in the margins)

but when i was twelve, i borrowed this book from someone. and i never gave it back. shocking, right?? even more shocking is that i do not regret it. "my" copy is fat, with sprouted, swollen pages soft to the touch, and has been read at least twenty times. the copies they sell nowadays have some sort of modern paper that make the book half the size of the one i have, and it looks anemic and sad. mine is a proud fat tabby, basking in the sun of my love.

yeah, that one got away from me, but i don't even care. i love this book, i loooove this book. i made alfonso and greg read this book, and both of them gave it five stars. why?? because it is great. it is a cat adventure story, how could it be anything but great?

i always describe is as a cross between the hobbit and watership down but with cats. n.b. - i have never read the hobbit, but i saw the cartoon with all the singing, so i feel qualified to make this comparison.

it is a quest novel like the hobbit; it involves adventures in the forest, in the towns of man, and underground (shudder). and it employs its own animal vernacular the way that watership down does. but it is about a cat, trying to find his missing friend. and there are giant killer cats with red claws. and intrigue!

i fell in love with this world for both the action sequences and the interludes of catworld mythology and history, which are very detailed and add a density to a story that, in my description anyway, seems like it is slight: cat looks for missing friend. that's like saying titanic is about a boat that sinks. but there is all sorts of wailing and lovemaking surrounding the boat sinking. and this is better than titanic by many leagues.

and it is not slight at all (despite what modern paper would have you believe) - it has interspecial relationships (not those kind of relationships, grosso) and stories within stories, and it is a cat coming-of-age story as well as an adventure story with battles.

seeing negative reviews on here kind of breaks my heart, so i thought i would drop my two cents up in the mix. most of my childhood memories involve me, eating plums, and reading this book.

hpr, etc etc.

come to my blog!

[Sean Barrs · Rating 1 out of 5]

I have a rule with books. If I can’t get into it I put it down. I will then try a few weeks later. If I fail again I will try in a few months. I broke my rule with this. I tried this book no less than six times over the last year.

I mean it’s a fantasy novel about cats. I should love it, but I can’t seem to get past those first few chapters. The writing is quirky in places, even entertaining though it just doesn’t grip me. I don’t want to carry on reading. The plot provides no inciting incident to make me want to follow it to the end. After those few chapters it grows boring; thus, I gave up and wrote this very short review!

This one just isn’t for me.

[The Crimson Fucker · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m trying to find a way to say how much I loved this book and look manly at the same thing… but fuck it! there is no way in hell I can pull that one off! Well maybe Arnold Schwarzenegger can… so with that in mind do me a favor and while you read this review imagine Schwarzenegger is the one reading it… please? Remember my manly reputation is in stake here!!!!


Omg is so cute!!! It got it all:
Cute cats [X]
More cute cats [X]
Cat fights [X]
Evil cats [X]
Crazy cats [X]
Some kick ass cat fight scenes [X] [X] [X]
Cool comic relieve cats [X]
Romantic interest that actually interesting cats [X] (Roofshadow kick ass!)
Warrior cats [X]
Lazy bitch cat [X] (Hushpad you suck you lazy bitch!!!!)
Cats in the water, cats in the air, cats on ice, cats on boats, cats on trees, cats in the ocean, cats on fire, evil cats even cats in the air [X] [X] [X] [X] [X] [X] [X]

Over all is a lovely book about a cute cat trying to find out who he really is… even if he doesn’t know that’s his real quest…

[Mariel · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is a scene in a (I could be wrong) little known film from the early '90s called Sweet Nothing. Michael Imperioli (you probably know him from The Sopranos) is addicted to the drugs he's peddling. You know, dealing drugs on the side of his little league Wall Street job wasn't as fun and easy as it first seemed. His not really his friend boss (played by Paul Calderon) looks at him with abject disgust and proclaims: "You crackhead motherfucker." It's not that good of a film but I always liked the way that Calderon says that line at the precise moment when Imperioli couldn't lie anymore about being anything else. There's also a good speech from Imperioli's character about chasing that first time high. He uses an analogy about cherry snow cones. Nothing before or since had ever tasted so cold and sweet but he keeps eating them anyway. Okay, Tailchaser's Song isn't Watership Down! You crackhead motherfucker. What was I thinking? I was thinking about Watership Down. I... can't help it! The times I read Watership Down were some of the happiest of my entire life. What else am I going to do?

I started reading Tailchaser's Song months ago. I stalled a bit, er a lot, because it seemed to be written in that 1980s overwritten fantasy style. You know the one when you keep reading them anyway and they force you to eat all kinds of snacks that are bad for you while you are reading them and then you put on too much weight? You know the ones. Please don't pretend you don't. We've come too far to turn back now! Take my hand. I won't leave without you! I've got your letter to Snowball and Fritz and they'll grow up proud of their papa. We're going to make it and then we're going to set up a nice little place and tend the rabbits.

Tailchaser's Song is better than the other pathetic attempts on my part to recreate Watership Down. No, I mean the pathetic attempt on part of the authors. I didn't do anything wrong. I was just innocently trying to read a water(ship)ed down version of the best book in the known universe. No one tries to rape anyone either like in Watership Down with Birds and Watership Down with Wolves, at least (those were some creepy as fuck scenes. I wasn't hungry at all). There's really nothing wrong with it. It's your typical quest story. There's a nice moral of the story about that feeling I always got when reading or watching quest stories. You know when they go home and they have to leave the amazing friends they made behind? And why does the damned story have to end and they can't keep any of those super cool friends? What was the point of going through all of that to just go home? Why can't the good stuff last forever and ever? Fritti has that at the end and I loved that he doesn't want to give that good stuff up. That was pretty right on on Tad Williams's part. But? The steady stream of animals they meet and episodic jams didn't make ME want to never go home. I didn't give much of a dump about the cat royalty either. It was nice enough but I didn't ever live in that world. I wanted to live in it! I wanted beep Watership Down.

I did like how Fritti mourns for his lost kittenhood from time to time. He was pretty cute. I mean, I totally respect him as his own cat and I'm not a M'an. I'm a little pissed that his girlfriend was another dumb female in one of these stories. Why do they always do that? Even my precious Watership Down didn't represent the ladies too well. We like adventures too!

My heart is hollow like a chocolate bunny now. Tailchaser (the cats have three names just like in Russian novels) gets to keep his friends. What about me? What do I get? I don't even want to eat these dang cheese sandwiches. No, you eat them. I'm too depressed. I have learned my lesson once and for all. NO MORE WATERSHIP DOWN READALIKES.


Okay, but this one could be good! This one might really be just like Watership Down... I'm not a total loser!

[Athena (OneReadingNurse) · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's an odd feeling to come back to this book as an adult. To me it always felt like TS Eliot meets The Hobbit, but with cats.

As a teen I remember being mortified by all the dead, dying, and maimed animals.  For a book about a cat quest to find his lost friend, Tailchaser gets pretty dark towards the end.

Even as an adult I still find it disturbing in places. A reanimated corpse made of dying and dead animals? Omg. And I felt constantly awful for poor Pouncequick who is like the cutest little kitten but also the punching bag of the story.

Other than a pile of corpses and animals killing each other like humans do in similar books, it's a decent story. You obviously have to root for the characters (except Hushpad) because they're adorable cats.  There's plenty of action once the story gets going, you just have to wade through a lot of introduction and cat stuff to get there.

One thing I appreciate more as an adult is the language and cultural creation.  I love when authors go crazy creating language for their fictional worlds. Williams made a whole different world of cat culture, naming conventions, speech patterns etc, for the world and it's pretty darn well thought out. This includes alternate pronunciations within the cat language and a glossary in the original edition. He also creates tons of legends and origin stories for The Folk which I enjoyed. Many different authors and poets are quoted at the chapter intros too. I'm not sure if that aspect distracted or added but I liked them.

My last thought is about world building in animal stories.  It's hard to accomplish a good build because the author is limited to the point of view and understanding of the animal characters.  I think Williams nailed it here though with the legends and stories and using setting to relate the cats' world views, without overdoing it and bringing in unnecessary information that's not relevant to the characters.

Overall, this is a fun coming of age adventure. It gets darker than I'd expect and has enough depth to keep readers of any age interested throughout.

(Now pardon me while I open up a refuge for all the animals brutalized by Hearteater in cat hell 😭)

[Juushika · Rating 2 out of 5]

Fritti Tailchaser is a young ginger tomcat in a world where cats have their own language, culture, and mythology. When his friend and prospective mate Hushpad goes missing, Tailchaser sets out on a quest to discover what distant evil threatens the lives of the Folk. Tailchaser's Song is a generic fantasy questing novel with larger-than-life gods and a feline wrapping--but, unfortunately, Williams knows nothing about cats. Gross inaccuracies and general misconceptions strip away the feline aspect and so destroy this book's only unique aspect. I do not recommend it.

In plot, pacing, and writing style, Tailchaser's Song is unexceptional but not that bad. Williams knows how to write a novel, if not a very good one, and the book follows many common fantasy tropes. Tailchaser is an unassuming small "town" youth who leaves on an ill-advised quest which leads him to a big city, to an enemy city, and up against a scheming powerful antagonist so that good may triumph against evil. Bits of interspersed mythology create a powerful setting, yet this mythology still seem out of place when it enters the plot. Williams paces his book well, and Tailchaser's journey feels realistically long while maintaining interesting variety. Best of all, the book doesn't end as soon as evil is vanquished, identifying Tailchaser is a character in his own right and not just a tool of the story. All in all, the book is aptly- but not well-written: readable, passably skillful, but not memorable.

However, what sets this book apart is also what condemns it. Tailchaser is a cat, and his journey leads him through cat cities and against cat gods. But for all this focus on cats, Williams knows little about them. They speak a "high" language which is almost entirely spoken--but domestic cats don't vocalize among each other. Williams believes that kittens are born without fur, that cats prefer forests, that they live in teeming cities, that they can overdose on catnip. Cats also hunt mice and clean themselves and heckle dogs, but on the whole what Williams gets right are generalities and nothing more. Worse, he sets feral cats as the ideal--a dangerous and false lesson to the reader. Real cats are not the indigenous master species presented in Tailchaser's Song, nor do they hate humans for neutering, nor are housecats somehow inferior. Whatever personal secret it is that cats keep in their own silent, heavy-eyed company, despising M'an, building huge cat cities in forests, and originating from powerful old cat-gods is not it.

The premise of this book probably appeals most to cat fans--but the book itself will be most disappointing to cat fans. On the whole, the book is neither very good nor very bad. Capably written but not particularly skillful, it's a fairly average fantasy novel. The cat characters, on the other hand, could be quite exceptional--but this is not a book in the lines of Watership Down or even the Redwall series. In fact, there are barely any cats here--merely predictable human characters wrapped in cursory fur. With nothing else to endorse the book, I don't recommend Tailchaser's Song. While it is not outright bad, it is disappointing.

(As the writing isn't incredibly awful, I can't be quite so virulently negative about this book as I might like to be while still maintaining some sense of a fair assessment. However: I hated it. I hated it a lot--because if you're so captured by the magic of your first pet cat you should at least pretend to know something of that magic before you write a book about it. Cats don't have gender identities and aren't meant to be feral and, for the love of all that which is good, they do not meow at each other. A basic encyclopedia article offers more truth about the mystical depths of cat nature than there are in the 400 pages of this book. I really, really hated it.)

[Fantasy boy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is about a gallant, adventurous, and compassionate cat , Fritti which started his journey since he has discovered that the one of his friends, Hushpad was disappear. And this incident has dragged him in an extraordinary adventure.

This is Tad Williams's debut and It already showed that Tad Williams is capable of weaving myths and legends in the stories. This is the shining spark of Tad Williams's fantasy books! Like dogs and cats's long histories of anathema, cats's first home and the legend of Firefoot etc.. I think It is appealing to me that the story is full of mysteries and stories about animals. Their wild lives of living in woods or burrows. They are very stalwart to the harmful and malign environment.
Sometimes, they fight with their nemesis, sometimes they collaborate as alliances. In this book, Tailchaser's song, kittens have been listening to elder's stories about the legends and fables, for them it would be the fact that those entities and incredulous lands has existed, and this is why Fritti, our protagonist always wanted to seize the chances of exploring the unknown territories for cats, even his first great adventure started due to finding Hushpad.

I really appreciate how Tad Williams deals with the ending, and I already knew that Hushpad wasn't captured by the evil, boneguards or the villains. She was captured by M'an which means human and inevitably, she has chosen to be in the thrall as human's pet. Fritti's finally realized that his heart desire isn't about a comfortable shelter, more is about exhilarating adventures, with his comrades, with the stories would be sung by many cats. After finished reading Tailchaser's Song, I confidently believe that there is a world where cats are living outside human's territories, and have numerous adventures to their kin; human just one of exotic legends for them, not their master or reliance. Having liberty to live under the uncountable stars by sea, by forest or just wherever they want to stay for a while when they want to take a rest from tiresome journey.

[Ineffable7980x · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the biggest surprise of my reading year so far. I picked up this book at a used bookstore with very little previous exposure to Williams' writing. About 15 years ago, I read about a third of his first Otherland book. And Memory, Sorrow and Thorn has long been on my TBR for ages. What I didn't expect is how wonderful and mythic this book felt. Yes, there are definite echoes of Watership Down. Less charitable people would say that this book directly steals from that classic, but I would disagree. This novel is very much its own thing. First of all, it is much more supernatural than Watership Down (at least as I can recall). I love how Williams has built up an entire history and culture of the cats. This cosmology also explains the role of mankind, in a way that made me smile. The cats also have an entire vocabulary of their own. The most commonly used words are defined in a glossary in the back.

Overall, this is very much a coming of age story, and a book about the conflict between good and evil. But underneath those overarching themes, there is a very interesting exploration of selfhood and its relation to tradition.

I ate this book up. And mercifully, unlike most of Williams' stories, this book is also short, a bit more than 350 pages.

If you like fantasy, especially of an older style, this is definitely worth a read.

Recommended.

[Eh?Eh! · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another long ago read that I can't quite remember. I did own it but lent it out and never saw it again. I have mental images of a cat with red claws, evil cats with chilling graveyard breath, and a climactic showdown involved a Jabba-the-Hut-sized evil cat god. I think I cried, too, but I can't remember why or for what...need to read this again.

[David Sarkies · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Cat's Life
12 February 2017

I remember seeing this book at my friend's house years ago and borrowing it for a bit of a read. Mind you my friend is a bit of a booknerd like me, though these days our tastes in books have taken a bit (or a lot) of a divergence. The thing is that while he went on to study social work I went on to study an arts degree. The other thing is that I had an English teacher that would rile against what he considered to be airport trash, and books like those by Stephen King, were basically off of his list. In fact I remember writing a play about a young adult named Brian Megadethhead who was ordered by a judge to either go back to school (and a Catholic school at that) or go to gaol – he decided to go back to school. Needless to say my English teacher wasn't all that impressed and spent the rest of the year decrying Megadeth as well as having a go at Stephen King novels, or whatever the current fad was at the time.

Mind you, whenever I am in an airport I do like to have a wander through the bookshop just to see what is actually sitting on the shelf and to see if there are actually any books that my teacher would actually approve, and while it has been years since I was in his class, and am not even sure if he is still teaching English, I still wonder whether Life of Pi would actually appear on his list of banned books, considering the last time I wondered through an airport bookshop that was the only book that I thought would be acceptable to him (though I suspect that Fifty Shades of Grey would). Anyway, most long haul international flights have a television in the back of the seat with more shows than one could even watch in a twelve hour period that the need to buy rubbish at airport bookshops is probably no longer necessary.

Anyway, on to this book, even though it has been quite a while since I have read it, but the fact that I have read it (albeit a long time ago) I feel that I should probably say a few things about it. Mind you, I should try to get my hands on it to read it again because it was, to put it bluntly, nothing short of awesome. Mind you, with all the other books out there, as well as the books on my shelf, reading this again might be a little lower on my list of priorities, though I'm sure if I see it in a bookshop I would probably buy it, and then proceed to read it again – that was how much I enjoyed it. In fact, I believe I have seen other books written by Tad Williams, and the name always rang a bell, it is just it wasn't until I looked this book up on Wikipedia as a bit of an aide de memoire that I suddenly connected him with this book.

So, Tailchaser's song is about a cat in the world where cats have a civilisation and communicate with each other. In fact they have their own mythology, and while humans exist, they tend to be these creatures that live in a mysterious world, a world that sometimes crosses with that of the cats, but not by much. In fact all of the animals have their own cultures and mythologies, it is just that the cats' world is the main focus of the book. The thing is that this book is about cats and about how these cats go on a quest and end up saving the world from a particularly evil and nasty cat, and honestly who doesn't love cats.

Well, cat haters of course, but then as they say haters are gonna hate. Mind you, there are people who are allergic to cats, so I can understand why they aren't particularly fond of them, but I have to admit that you got to love the rather eccentric nature of our feline companions, even though, as they say, dogs have masters and cats have staff. Actually, that is why my friend prefers cats over dogs – dogs tend to be dependant and incredibly clingy (I'm sure dog owners have discovered what happens when you bring a new dog home and then go to sleep only to be kept awake all night from howls of loneliness) while cats tend to be independent. Well, they are independent to an extent because when they want something (usually something to eat) you generally know about it. Unfortunately 'go catch a mouse' generally doesn't work.

The main reason that this book came to mind is because I started reading Duncton Wood, which I had picked up cheap from my Church's fate (though it turned out that I picked up books two, three, and four, but fortunately I found book one at a bookshop around the corner), which is similar, but about moles. The other interesting thing is that with these books everybody seems to make comments about the similarities between this book, Watership Downs, and Lord of the Rings. The thing is that any book that happens to be a fantasy book is considered to be similar to Lord of the Rings, but that is not surprising because it is probably the most well known fantasy book out there. As for Watership Downs, I have to admit that I haven't read it yet, though I should make an effort to do so someday.

Oh, before I forget, apparently they will be releasing a movie based on this book in 2018 so I'm going to have to keep an eye out for it.

[Mykle]

A lot of people -- several dozen of them, all excellent fine people -- are waiting for me to read their books. There's an unwieldily stack of these books, depressing in its height, even now crouching on a shelf behind me like some kind of mess-monster, mocking me and making me feel bad. I intend to read every one of these books. I promised I would. Slowly, I am reading them all.

How slowly? Well, in 1985 I received a hardback of Tailchaser's Song from Tad Williams himself. I finally got around to reading it last week. It's pretty good. But that's twenty-six years. In my defense I can say I don't think Tad was waiting to hear back from me; he didn't need a blurb or promotional assistance or my approval or anything. If you are one of those people waiting for me to get back to you with any of that stuff, I can confidently promise you that I will take less than twenty-six years to do so.

I remember Tailchaser's Song as an instant success that launched Tad's writing career. I was a friend of Tad's family; his brother and I used to sub for him on his paper route, his main source of extra-literary income back when he needed any. It was really great to see him succeed. It was my first ever view of an author "making it," so it left a big impression. He not only quit his paper route, I think he even bought a new car! How pimp is that?

But I must confess I'm not really drawn to epic fantasy/adventure stuff, which is probably why I didn't read this in 1985. I've cracked the pages of maybe a half-dozen other ThingQuest-style books that gave me a lot of eye-rolling but no sustained interest. Perhaps it's just my cynical ADHD nature: I find such fantasy epics ask a larger amount of belief-suspension than I can muster. But I'm thinking about writing a novel about cats, so it seemed like a good time to read one, just as a learning experience.

I found it humbling. This kind of fantasy novel requires a serious dedication to world-building, mythos-building, language-invention and landscape design before you can even write the first paragraph. And even after you get started you still have to constantly invent new characters and describe new places with each new chapter. I'm very impressed by such stuff -- it's exactly the kind of writing I'm bad at, and Tad pulled it off very smoothly in this, his very first book, when he was much younger than I am now.

He's also got an impressive sense of cats, which deflects the Catsploitation charges one could easily level at this book. Cat lovers are a vapidly exploited market, but if you were going to read any fantasy adventure story about magical cat quests, you probably could't do much better than this.

[L.L. MacRae · Rating 4 out of 5]

A tricky book to rate. I tried Tad William's "Dragonbone Chair" a few years ago and put it down after around 100 pages (or was it 200) - mostly because I found the pace glacial and I tend not to care for 10yo farm boy characters (or kitchen boy as was the case there).

Tailchaser's Song gives me Watership Down vibes crossed with a similar sort of character as Simon - but in cat form. The writing was wonderful, as I think is to be expected with Tad Williams, and there were many passages of text I really enjoyed. Very near the end, there was a description of the waves likened to the purring of a large mother cat, which I found very beautiful.

Great chunks of the book felt pulled straight from Efrafa (Watership Down), but with a subtly supernatural twist. Several looming questions were never *really* answered, and though I could tell Tailchaser's "heart's desire" probably wasn't going to work (and there was another more obvious one), I felt the whole final conclusion of the story wasn't quite there for me.

I'm really torn. As far as enjoyment, I'm probably somewhere around a 3/5, but the writing is wonderful, and I feel like this is the sort of book I'd have loved as a child (I read a number of animal fantasy books and have always liked them).

So I think overall this is a 3.5 rounded up? It wasn't "bad" but for me it wasn't super impactful.

I started reading this because of "How Much Is That In Cat-Years: Thoughts From The Author" - which I read and fell in love with and was then desperate to read the resulting book.

I'm ultimately glad I read it, which is why I'm rounding it up :)

[Wendy · Rating 1 out of 5]

You can tell it was a debut. It really could have stood a rewrite - most of it dragged, yet the ending was rushed. The main character was about as interesting as a wet potato, and with as much agency and ambition. I also have to wonder if his interactions with cats ever led him to actually research them at all.

I don’t know, in theory I suppose it was a worthy idea, but the execution left me cold. I won't totally write this author off, though, since first novels aren't always spectacular, and I hear good things about his later work. I'd just say that unless you're a die-hard fan of his, it wouldn't hurt to skip this one.

[Carrie · Rating 2 out of 5]

"Tailchaser's Song" has an interesting story, and the author did a good job of giving the animals different cultures. But I felt nothing for the characters. You meet Hushpad once, and she becomes Tailchaser's best friend somehow. Suddenly she's gone and you're obviously supposed to feel pathos for her, but I couldn't. Taiilchaser himself didn't have much of a personaliity either. The only characters with personality were the squirrels (who have a cool way of talking), Eatbugs (for whom I lost my respect after a cliché plot twist), and the evil cats (I made myself think they were awesome because I needed to think that about someone to keep my sanity..). Pouncequick kind of had character but not much.
I found it hard to be engaged in the story because of the writing, but in retrospect I liked it. My brain painted some very nice images for this and I enjoyed those scenes a lot. I'm sure there's a good crowd this book will appeal to but I guess I'm not in it.

[Emily G · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book years ago and loved it to bits, so when I saw it in a bookshop recently I just had to buy it. Now it is always very different reading a book years on, especially when you have such high expectations, but overall this didn't disappoint.

This book is essentially about cats, or the folk, as they like to call themselves and one kitten in particular, Fritti Tailchaser, who goes on a desperate quest to discover what has happened to his beloved Hushpad, who has disappeared along with many others of the folk. However this journey takes a sinister turn and Fritti, young and inexperienced, has to grow up quickly to meet this challenge for the sake of not only himself but all the folk; fortunately, he has help in the form of his friends, Pouncequick and Roofshadow.

A must for any cat lovers, I think!

[Nicky · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oh, I loved this. I've been wanting to read Tailchaser's Song for a long time, while not being quite sure whether I'd really like it. I tend to like Tad Williams' work, though if he layered on the worldbuilding and description any thicker in some of his work, you could eat it. Fortunately, he didn't do too much of that here: you're left to play catch-up a bit, at times, which I honestly prefer.

The cats are sweet, but they're also not just sweet. They felt like cats. They fight and they yowl and spit and hiss and groom each other and curl up to sleep together. I loved Pouncequick, and Roofshadow -- I was less pleased with Hushpad, being such a non-entity and with the ending, because geez, what a cliché, and how far away did I see that coming?

Still, a quick and fun read, and one that'll stay in my collection.

[Ettelwen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jestli Tadova kočičí prvotina něco křičí do světa, je to předzvěst něčeho, co se nám později dostane pod kůži ve formě Východního Ardu.

Příběh Tailchasera je příběhem mytologie, kultury i jazyka. V mnoha situacích působí mile, možná až pohádkově, ale nenechte se moc rozmlsat. Tad se vůbec nestraní reality potravního řetězce a následků života s člověkem. Do příběhu se navíc krok po kroku vkrádá jakási temnota a všudypřítomná ponurost. Je zde cítit autorův cit pro prózu a hutnost. A ač bych si klidně několik kapitol odpustila, ta hořko sladká tečka na konci zapůsobila přesně tak, jak měla …

Někdy se zkrátka ženeme za něčím co známe a máme rádi, ale ono se to na konci ukáže v úplně jiném světle. Proč? Protože život tam venku se nezastavuje. Ten pokračuje dál, hýbe se a mění…

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Torn between this being a 4 and 5 star. What you would call the action climax regrettably cuts itself short and gets regulated to being told to us after the fact. The actual narrative arc ends with more melancholy and character feeling than most novels about humans, especially in the fantasy genre - it takes time to show the effect the journey has had on our protagonist, both good and bad, one of the few instances I can think of outside of Lord of the Rings.

[Nikoleta · Rating 4 out of 5]

Αυτο το βιβλίο ειναι τόσο μα τόσο ωραιο! Το προτείνω σε μικρούς και μεγάλους, αγόρια κ κορίτσια, σε φιλόζωους, σε αυτούς που τους αρέσουν οι περιπέτειες και τα μεγάλα ταξίδια αναζήτησης, οι παλίοι μύθοι και οι παραμυθάδες που αρέσκονται να λένε ιστορίες τις σκοτεινές νύχτες! Έγινε ένα απο τα αγαπημένα μου!

[Trin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Why is this cat fantasy novel gender essentialist? Tailchaser meets like a million cats in his quest, and only three of them are female: his damsel-in-distress girlfriend, an inept lazy queen, and his not-like-other-girls (literally described as a tomboy, although she is a cat) possible new love interest. The three types of women, I guess. It's implied that most female cats don't hunt, which I think should automatically get you attacked by a lioness. Also, the wild male cats show great disgust for neutered males, describing them as eunuchs and, in one recounted story, mistaking a fixed male cat for a female and then reacting like it's The Crying Game when the truth is revealed. Much to unpack.

Meanwhile, while there's some interesting worldbuilding involving cat society and behavior -- certainly, I suspect "Erin Hunter" and the Warrior cats books owe Williams a great debt -- this is mostly pretty plodding and dull. And the reveal of what's making cats disappear and threatening the destruction of their land is, instead of the environmental commentary I was expecting, just a big mutant cat/catgod. Really? The whole -- long -- climatic sequence also includes so much of disability as a signifier of evil. Like, yikes, Tad. I get that this was a debut novel and it was published in 1985, but...it really reads like a debut novel published in 1985.

Skippable!

[Michelle Kobus · Rating 5 out of 5]

>Originally read in late 2011.
>Reread January, 2014

I love this book so much I named my cat, then a kitten, Fritti (Tailchaser's heart name, used among loved ones).

I wish the ending could have been a bit more clear. I believe Hearteater's goal was to tunnel to every cat home and lead a secret attack on each in turn. It's kind of hinted at throughout the book, but no one states that was his plan outright. I'm not usually a person who needs things spelled out for me, but I do think the facts should be solidly presented at some point in a story; we really only got hints, instead.

[Oscar Lye · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really enjoyable! I loved the characters, and the fable based nature of the world the cats inhabit.

Tad Williams describes the North American wilderness with an impressively visual quality. Each locale or landscape that our cats traverse possessed its own distinctive and engaging personality and quirks. I was also shocked by how much thematic darkness he was able to include in this heartwarming feline odyssey. Some parts were terrifying!

Eatbugs was my favourite cat.

[Harley Gesford · Rating 5 out of 5]

I fucking loved this book.

[Connie53 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wat grappig dat je zo kunt genieten van een boek over katten. En dat heb ik met dit boek over Fritti Staartjager. Er gebeuren vreemde onrustbarende dingen in het Randbosje waar Fritti geboren is. Er verdwijnen veel katten uit hun stam en een daarvan is Stilpoot met wie Fritti wel een verbinding wil aangaan. Er wordt besloten dat een groepje katten naar het hof zal af reizen op de Koningin op de hoogte te stellen.Op een bepaald moment besluit Fritti ook zelf op zoek naar Stilpoot te gaan. Dan volgt een reis vol avonturen waarbij Fritti wordt bijgestaan door Grijpgraag, een jong katje dat hem is nagelopen en Firsa Dakschaduw, een jonge vrouwelijk kat. Veel ongemakken en gevaren verder weet Fritti wat al de lessen van de reis voor hem betekenen.

[GҽɱɱαSM · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.6*
Williams ens submergeix en un món de fantasia felina amb aquesta òpera prima plena de imaginació. Seguim Fritti Cazarrabo, un gat coratjós que, en busca de la seva amiga Pata Suave, descobreix un univers de clans secrets, déus ancestrals i amenaces sobrenaturals. Amb una mitologia rica (incloent rituals, llenguatge propi i jerarquies socials), el llibre combina l’epicitat d’un viatge de l’heroi amb la tendresa dels protagonistes animals.

La prosa de Williams és poètica i immersiva, tot i que el ritme pot decaure en alguns moments. Ideal per als que gaudeixen de fantasies fosques amb un toc màgic i personatges animals ben desenvolupats. No és només una aventura per a amants dels gats, sinó una història universal sobre l’amistat, el valor i els misteris que s’amaguen més enllà del nostre món conegut. Un clàssic ocult que mereix més reconeixement.

[AquaMoon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ah... I always suspected the Blood of the Folk ran deep within my veins. From the time I was but a small Kit, I felt a connection to those ancestors. Now I know why.

This book reminded me a lot of Erin Hunter's Warriors books, of which I read (and enjoyed) the first couple arcs (2009? 2010?)...until they killed off my favorite character. I'd kind of lost interest in the books by then. They were getting too repetitious. And, besides, it was getting hard to keep track of all the characters. The Warriors books have since multiplied like an unaltered Fela left to her own devices for too many seasons. I wouldn't even know where to start if I were to get back into them. Too intimidating.

But THIS book, you guys! THIS book!! I didn't know it when I picked it up, but it was exactly what I wanted, apparently: A high fantasy with no humans and with no human politics. There were still some politics, but they were Folk politics and pretty far removed from what I'm trying to avoid when I read for escapism. (Is it just me or are most modern authors/books really heavy-handed on the politics? While I fully agree that we need diversity and such in books, not everything has to be political. Not everything has to be a soapbox opportunity. Sometimes people want to read to escape the world, not carry it with them, Inception's Dream within a Dream-style, when reading for pleasure). Anyway, I devoured this! Shamelessly devoured...not unlike Fritti with the Catmint. Although, to the best of my knowledge, I didn't experience any adverse effects from reading. I may have dreamed about the book last night, but those dreams also contained random bits of Return of the Jedi mixed in with something about being back at high school. Likely these dreams were just nocturnal housekeeping rather than anything prophetic or meaningful.

Anyway, this book is about Fritti Tailchaser, a feral cat whose good friend/crush, Hushpad, disappears one day...only one of many mysterious disappearances among the cat clans. Tailchaser, accompanied by a kitten, Pouncequick, embarks on a quest to find what happened to her. They are joined by Roofshadow, a fela, and Eatbugs, a crazy old cat (who was one of my favorites). They encounter creatures friendly and not so much, have many adventures, and face many dangers before finally Tailchaser reaches his destination. But the ending is not what I expected, although I should have seen it coming. I still can't believe she Friend-Zoned him!! After all he went through to find her! Meowch! Can't blame her for choosing the Easy Life of a housecat, though: Scritches and Boops, never being hungry, a Growler to bully... Fritti and Roofshadow were a better match, now that I think of it. Still, I thought it would be Roofshadow and Pouncequick. Sure, the age difference thing, but kittens grow quickly and PQ had that mature beyond his Eye Openings vibe by the end of the story. Also, Cougars... Do the kids still call them Cougars?

I've seen this compared to books like Watership Down or The Lord of the Rings, but I've never read Watership Down and found Tailchaser's Song was far less long-winded than anything Tolkien ever penned. So I can't really say. I stick to my original Warriors comparison, although THIS book is geared for older readers or those with a longer attention span. Mainly I just loved this book: I loved the story, I loved all the characters, and I loved how the author created whole mythologies and backstories for cats...and for all the creatures that appear in the pages. Loved everything about it and I can't believe it took me this long to discover it.

p.s. I will never look at a squirrel the same way! However, I couldn't help but picture McSquizzy and Company when Fritti encountered the Rikchickchick.

[Chantal · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really wanted to love this book, but at times it was so hard to follow. Too many names of cats that play a role in this book and a lot of other words then usual. The overal story was okay, but I wished it would be simpeler.

[Ian Racey · Rating 4 out of 5]

An utterly delightful book, clearly written from a place of love for cats. Characters are multi-faceted and well-developed, their world and society are multi-faceted and well-developed, and yet everything feels so very feline. The cat mythology, from the grand creation myth to the just-so stories about the origin of man or how cats came to avoid the water but still eat fish (I especially loved the story about the sun becoming so big a ball because the cat goddess couldn't resist pawing at it every time it rolled away); the tension between the existence of a cat city and the cats' desire for solitude; even the small details like the place of cat torment being rife with the "stench of unburied droppings".

My eight year old read it this past summer, and just a week or so ago told me it's her favourite ever book, so safe to say it's for all ages. It's just so charming, especially the first half.

Readers of Memory, Sorrow and Thorn will have fun spotting lots of little character moments, descriptive lines or plot tropes that would recur again, in their own way, in The Dragonbone Chair.

Loses a star for the last four or five chapters, with a disjointed ending and some weird touches of character development, but it's a fairly small criticism.

[🥀 Rose 🥀 · Rating 1 out of 5]

My friend is gonna kill me. I don't think I'm cut out for talking animal books. I seriously tried.😞

[Heather · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was quite a fun book to read! I remember reading it several years ago, but I honestly could not remember the story very well. What I did retain from the first time I read it was some of the vernacular. I find myself calling squirrels, "Rikchikchik's" all the time. And as I was riding my bike today, I was noticing all of the fla'fa'az! LOL!
What starts out as a happy little cat story, definitely takes a dark turn a little less than half way through. I think it is best described as a cat-version of "Lord of the Rings." Or maybe, "The Wizard of Oz," which is what I was REALLY thinking at the end! ("If I ever go looking for my heart's desire again, I won't look any further than my own back yard. Because if it isn't there, I never really lost it to begin with." - Dorothy) For a first book, Tad Williams does an excellent job!
It probably helps to have a love of cats to truly enjoy this book. (Which I do.) But it also feeds into my imagination, that all animals have their own little worlds of adventure going on all around us.
I can see why this is my husband's favorite book of all time!