365 Days of Books

Spellsinger is the first in the Spellsinger series of 6 books. Jon-Tom is a college student in the mid-1980's. He is whipped out of his universe by a wizard looking for aid from another magical creature, an engineer. Jon-Tom, a sanitation engineer (janitor) is not what was expected; neither is the wizard what Jon-Tom expected. Clothahump is a turtle and this new world is "peopled" with intelligent and feisty animals. Clothahump has divined that great trouble is coming from "The Plated Ones", an insect race. An attempt to return Jon-Tom to his earth fails spectacularly but does bring another human to this world. It turns out that Jon-Tom is a spellsinger who through music and song can manipulate the world into providing transportation. A ragged and slightly criminal but generally positive group grows and travels to try to stop the insect invasion.

The story is dated by the musical references. It took me quite a while to read this book, maybe two weeks. I'm not sure why, it just didn't catch my interest and I kept putting it down in favour of other books.