My review of Flute Song Magic will be the first in a series of sorts. For years, I've been plagued by the plots of several books whose name completely escaped me. Using the POWERS OF THE INTERNET, I've managed to not only rediscover them but buy some really cheap copies. Which means that you guys get to reap the benefits(?) of my rediscoveries!Flutirr is a Nelvin, a species with a rigid, caste-based society and stringent rules about controlling emotions. He's never fit in well, having burst into tears on his first day of school seventeen years earlier, but as a young man he unwittingly begins to divorce himself from the other Nobles when he hears the complex and emotionally charged music of Don, a classless Nelvin who is dying from a deadly disease.Flute Song Magic is the story of the Noble boy's quest across his expansive planet to find a cure. On his travels, he encounters many strange people (including humans!) and slowly sheds the material vestiges of his ill fitting former life. The character development here is subtle, gradual, and well-handled. Flutirr's increasing empathy is very believable, and Shettle communicates it through fairly confident writing.This might seem surprising considering her inexperience, as Flute Song Magic was published through a publishing contest aimed at teenagers under the age of eighteen. Overall, this isn't very evident and she generally handles the ideas within the novel very well. It does seem bookended by slightly heavy-handed didactism, however, as Shettle essentially lectures her audience on the evils of an overly rigid and prejudiced society. Later in the novel, a half-hearted scene with a unicorn (inexplicable in a novel that is otherwise firmly sci-fi) and the presence of a deaf human author avatar stick out oddly, and are clearly novice mistakes. This is easy to forgive, though, considering the fact that Shettle was actually a novice. Flute Song Magic was a surprisingly solid read, and it's a shame that Shettle apparently didn't pursue writing further. ( )