SERIES SPOTLIGHT – Tufa Audiobook Review: The Hum and the Shiver by Alex Bledsoe

What’s this? A series spotlight? Yes, but I won’t be reviewing the whole series in this one post. Neither will this be an endeavor I take on my own. Instead, you’ll be getting three reviews throughout the course of the day of the three main novels in this series.  I’ll be reviewing the first two books in the series, and Mogsy will be reviewing the last book in this series.  I’ll also point you to Wendy’s review of a short story set in this universe, and co-written with Teresa Frohock, called Hisses and Wings.

Before I get on to the review. Let’s start out with a very important fact about me:

My first tattoo was dedicated to my love of music. It’s my lifeblood, so I went into these book very expectant. Now, let’s kick things off with my thoughts on The Hum and the Shiver.

Genre: Magical Realism, Magic, Fantasy

Series: Book 1 of the Tufa

Publisher: Tor Books (September 27, 2011)

Author Information: Website | Twitter

Tiara’s Rating: 4 of 5 stars

Goodreads |  Amazon | Barnes & Noble

Narrator: Emily Janice Card, Stefan Rudnicki  | Length: 9 hrs and 42 mins | Audiobook Publisher: Blackstone Audio (September 29, 2011) | Whispersync Ready: Yes

Twenty-year-old Bronwyn Hyatt returns to Cloud County, Tennessee after a horrifying experience in Iraq brings her back to the States a war hero. She returns to her home a place she both dreads and loves, a place she has a deep connection to. Bronwyn is a Tufa, and they are at the apex of their magical strength, which manifests in music, when they’re home. The Tufa are an enigmatic ethnic group living in the mountains, believed to have been there when the first white settlers stumbled into the area. They’re called everything from black to Native American. However, no one knows for sure who they are or where they come from. Bronwyn is a pure-blood Tufa and one of the “First Daughters,” women who carry the songs of the Tufa through the generations. Even though Tufa men sing the songs, as well, the First Daughters are the most powerful and most important of the Tufa. Despite this, Bronwyn is a bit of black sheep among her kind. She was rebellious as a child, eventually leaving the safety of the Tufa land for the military. She returns a rebellious woman who is insistent of honoring her heritage while embracing the change that seems to be coming for them. On top of this change, signals of death are in the air, leaving the Tufa on high alert because the signs point to the Hyatt family.

This book also follows an uninspired reporter named Don Swayback who has lived away from the Tufa for years, but he is part Tufa. With Bronwyn’s return, which he reports on for the small paper he works for, he feels something awakening in him as he begins to embrace more of his heritage. That chance encounter stirs something in him. Being part Tufa means he may or may not have the capacity for the magic as explained  by this passage:

“Anyway, we need to talk about blood. You got more Tufa in you than you realize. It ain’t always about quantity: you can have a man ninety-five percent pureblood, but if that missing five percent is the part that lets him ride the wind, he ain’t a true Tufa. You know about riding the night wind?” Don shook his head.“You will, I reckon. I hope. One night you’ll go outside, look up at the sky, and either hear the hum or feel the shiver. If it’s the shiver … well, you’re still kin and I love you, but it means you’ll never be a real Tufa. If it’s the hum, though, you’ll feel the stirrin’ of your wings.”

I should briefly point out that in this book the term “the hum and the shiver” is used frequently and in many beautifully poetic ways. It can be used to express many different things in the Tufa life. 

Don’t think you’re going to get just a flowery book about music and magic. There’s politics at play among the Tufa. While many believe them to be one people, they are actually two separate and equally power factions of people who don’t like each other much and seem to be vying for power. Don’s story can seem a little disjointed from the rest of the book until you keep in mind there is a power struggle going on. Also, there’s much prejudice that the Tufa deal with, especially with the state trooper that patrols the area whose role isn’t much more than to be your standard racist villain. There’s also a few villains among their own including a man named Dwayne Gitterman, an ex-boyfriend of Bronwyn’s, who has “burned” the music out of him through his own evil. While he’s more interesting as a villain for this, he isn’t much better a villain than the state trooper except for his Tufa connection. There’s also that looming violence that Bronwyn dealt with in Iraq, which thankfully isn’t fully explored, mainly because Bronwyn insists on not revisiting that part of her ordeal. There’s some mention of violence against women, even a scene where one man sort of describes how he could carry out a rape against Bronwyn (he’s really not that stupid, though), but he does do some other violent things. This is redneck country, expect some ugliness is what I’m saying–in language and actions. It’s totally in keeping with the setting of such a story, but it may offend some.

I will admit in explaining the Tufa at points I think Bledsoe was trying to be as plain as possible for clarity’s sake, but instead those passages started to feel redundant and had me asking, “What can’t the Tufa do? Can one Superman punch someone into the sun? Asking for a friend.” On their own land, they hold a lot of power. Some people may even ask why would the Tufa even ever leave their lands with that in mind, but just because something is the “best” thing for you doesn’t mean that your heart doesn’t long to see things, to see the outside world, to have new experiences, even if that means weakening yourself or facing the unknown to do it. People run from their heritage all the time. That’s part of why Bronwyn left and she is hardly the first Tufa to leave, even in her family, but she found the need to be home greater than her need for something different. Bronwyn as a character left me conflicted. She was selfish and selfless, and maybe that describes most of us. However, so many of her actions that seemed selfless also seemed to really further her own selfish actions. Despite the terror she’s been through,  though, she is still a twenty-year-old woman barely out of girlhood and it shows. She’s strong, weak, self, sexual, and a million other things, and despite this, we need rounded female characters that don’t just embody our idea of what a heroine of a story should be.

The love interests of the story come in two forms. One is a older teenaged boy (which may squick some people because he is like seventeen), Terry-Joe Gitterman, the brother of Bronwyn’s former boyfriend, and a pastor ten years Bronwyn’s senior named Craig. Tufa don’t have religion per se. That’s not to say they don’t  believe in God, but they have their own beliefs and they are very private about them. So, giving Bronwyn a Christian love interest was intriguing. Both provided different angles to Bronwyn’s idea of love and sex, and in the end I really thought Bledsoe did something unique where this love triangle was concerned. While I did think Bledsoe played it a little safe with Craig, doing much to make him so likable despite him not really being someone the Tufa would open up to, I did like that Bledsoe presented Christianity not as something that should be about brimstone and fire but as about your actions and what you do to help your fellow man without their being some burdened placed on the actions because “God is watching!” In other words, Craig did things because he knew they were the right thing to do, and he didn’t condemn those he helped because they might not believe as he did. I only say he played it safe because there were moments when he did have the Christianity be so “in your face” and then back away from it instead of leading to more challenging conversations.

About halfway through the book, I stopped listening to the narration. My reasoning for this is because Card’s voice reminded me too much of the lady who co-narrated the novel, Wreckage (and that book annoyed me, so she faced a prejudiced in me getting to really enjoy her narration) and didn’t fit how I think Bronwyn–young, yet old all at the same time–would sound like, which came off too flighty and just didn’t feel right. Also, Card wasn’t really singing the verses in the book more than chanting them when I was looking to hear some twangy, bluegrass type music for the Tufa songs. As for Rudnicki, his voice was so deep that it distracted me. I love deep-voiced narrators both male and female, but his voice actually lulled me and made me miss bits of the story because it was easy to get caught up in his voice, which is very musical in nature compared to Card’s. Don’t let my thoughts on the narration deter you from listening to it, though, if you’re considering the audiobooks. Fun fact: Card attributes Rudnicki for much of her training.

I would be lying if I said that part of my ratings and feeling on these books come from many reasons aside from just the story itself. I connected with the story as a southerner and knowing how small towns can be with their secrets and their “haints.” Secondly, and the larger reason I started this series, is that I love books that combine music and magic in inventive ways. As a musician, I could relate too well to so many lines in this books about the hum and the shiver. My instructor was one of those people who believed you had people who played music and then you had people who music was so much a part of them that to rip music from their soul would surely kill them. She always said proudly that music was in my soul, and she still brags to this day about me being the youngest child she’s ever taken as a piano student because she “saw” something in me. I played a few other instruments, but the piano is my Magda (what Bronwyn calls her mandolin and most treasured instrument). In a way, she believed much of what this books believed, but in a much more realistic way. And I can name a few musicians that can touch me in a way that feels like something short of magic. This book does a beautiful job of capturing that feeling, the emotions and stories that music can capture in them. And I truly appreciate it for that. I’ll leave with this:

Story: | Performance: | Overall: