Eerily attuned to one another, twins Regina and Renata are so identical that even their mother can't tell them apart. Then tragedy strikes: a vicious attack leaves one twin dead and the other so traumatised that she turns totally inward, incapable of telling anybody what happened or even who she is. She remains lost to the world, until the day Mark, a family friend, comes to visit - and the young woman utters her first intelligible word.
As she recovers, still with no memory of the past, her nightmares grow steadily more frightful, followed by wild fits of hysteria and dark mood swings. Her strange outbursts seem to coincide with the grisly serial murders that have begun plaguing Seattle. Could she be the killer? Determined to dispel his suspicion, Mark stakes out her home. The unholy sight he witnesses one night will haunt his soul for the rest of his life.
When one encounters the name David Eddings in the world of fiction, usually the first things to be associated with him are his fantastic fantasy series, The Belgariad and The Mallorean.
Its very easy to forget that as well as being an outstanding fantasy writer, Eddings has a fairly firm grip on the realm of contemporary storytelling.
With Regina's Song, Eddings proves himself to be a complete storyteller; able to move from one genre to the next with barely a ripple. Regina's song is by no means the first non-fantasy Eddings book I have read (I managed to find a rare copy of High Hunt and an even rarer copy of The Losers some time ago) but it is the most recent, which is as good a reason to write a review of it as any I guess.
In Regina's Song, Eddings explores psychology and the horrors which can stem from bereavement amongst twins. As most people will probably be aware, it has long been suspected that twins can sometimes share an almost spooky link between each other. Regina's Song explores this also.
Reading this book, I found myself catching glimpses of different characters in Eddings other books. Its easy to see how Eddings has created interesting ways to build his characters and in Regina's Song, characterisation is one of the most important facets of the story. Indeed, the crux of the story relies on it.
Thats not too much of a problem though, since I believe that Eddings main strength is not his ability to build worlds or his ability to come up with well written biblical sounding introductions to his fantasy books (honest, I have heard someone say that), but his ability to build characters. In Regina's Song, Eddings performs this duty flawlessly. Again.
I nearly said just here that Eddings has managed to prove to the world that he is more than just a fantasy writer with Regina's Song, but that would be wrong. He managed to prove that a long time ago. What he has done here simply affirms it. Eddings is a master storyteller.
