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3.81 AVERAGE
3.81 AVERAGE
adventurous
dark
emotional
sad
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Excellent start, with epic world crafting and a wonderful cast of characters set to battle evil.
I love Kay, but he can't do modern dialog. Language that, in high fantasy, comes off as witty banter, sounds terrible in the mouths of modern protagonists. That said, there is some terrific writing in here, and some scenes at the end that were harrowing. It was a challenge to get over the modern-day scenes, though.
More like a 3.5 than a 3. Really fun read, if you're a fan of Guy Gavriel Kay's work and want to see the book that started it all, even if it is quite unlike the bulk of the work he's known for. It's sort of this weird blend of Narnia meets Lord of the Rings, where 5 people cross from our world into Fionavar. Mixes a ton of mythology and lore into it -- the Summer Tree (as in, the actual tree itself) is straight out of Norse mythology (the tree of Yggdrasil), for example.
It's fun, because you have great characters with names like Loren Silvercloak, Ivor, Na-Brendel...and Kim. From Toronto. That said, there are some rough edges to this -- the 5 Earthlings are awfully quick to accept the reality of Fionavar ("Oh there's another world? Cool. Let's go."). Kay's writing itself can be overwrought and overly dramatic. Later works show that he can veer into (enjoyable!) purple prose without overdoing it, but he hadn't quite mastered that effect in this particular book.
Still, this is a quick, fun read and a great start to a trilogy. Good for fans of classic fantasy with good vs. evil tropes and strong mythology references.
It's fun, because you have great characters with names like Loren Silvercloak, Ivor, Na-Brendel...and Kim. From Toronto. That said, there are some rough edges to this -- the 5 Earthlings are awfully quick to accept the reality of Fionavar ("Oh there's another world? Cool. Let's go."). Kay's writing itself can be overwrought and overly dramatic. Later works show that he can veer into (enjoyable!) purple prose without overdoing it, but he hadn't quite mastered that effect in this particular book.
Still, this is a quick, fun read and a great start to a trilogy. Good for fans of classic fantasy with good vs. evil tropes and strong mythology references.
I’ve decided to turn Goodreads into my reading journal. Feel free to ignore me.
It’s so weird coming back to this book after… 25 years? Is that right? I read this book as a young teen. Coming off a Piers Anthony kick that lasted forever, and then a strange swerve into Clive Barker (thanks to my older brother for that). I loved high fantasy before I started Fionavar, but I don’t think I realized how central it became to my teen reading life until rereading it as my first book of 2025. Rachel’s Song was, in my mind, a real song in the real world, and getting to those lyrics was a bit head spinning this time through. After reading this as a kid, I waited (not really) for so long to be pulled out of this mundane world and into something more… or expected something to transform me into something or someone greater.
Does the book hold up? Kind of, if it’s what you’re looking for. There’s some potentially problematic stuff in there… and the heroes are almost too shiny and perfect and pained. But at the same time, I kind of love how they’re all caught living in a high fantasy world that is meant to be the ur-text of high fantasy? The connections to other books and ideas which I think I worried were almost stolen content when I was younger — I get those more now as homages. It’s not really theft when it’s ALL worlds at once. It’s like the mixed up fairy tales trope but with fantasy and myth. It’s like the characters can’t help themselves. And the layering is so much smarter than I think I realized as a kid.
Anyway. I’m going to reread the whole series. I really loved coming back to The Summer Tree and seeing how much I misremembered… and how much was actually fully engrained in my brain.
It’s so weird coming back to this book after… 25 years? Is that right? I read this book as a young teen. Coming off a Piers Anthony kick that lasted forever, and then a strange swerve into Clive Barker (thanks to my older brother for that). I loved high fantasy before I started Fionavar, but I don’t think I realized how central it became to my teen reading life until rereading it as my first book of 2025. Rachel’s Song was, in my mind, a real song in the real world, and getting to those lyrics was a bit head spinning this time through. After reading this as a kid, I waited (not really) for so long to be pulled out of this mundane world and into something more… or expected something to transform me into something or someone greater.
Does the book hold up? Kind of, if it’s what you’re looking for. There’s some potentially problematic stuff in there… and the heroes are almost too shiny and perfect and pained. But at the same time, I kind of love how they’re all caught living in a high fantasy world that is meant to be the ur-text of high fantasy? The connections to other books and ideas which I think I worried were almost stolen content when I was younger — I get those more now as homages. It’s not really theft when it’s ALL worlds at once. It’s like the mixed up fairy tales trope but with fantasy and myth. It’s like the characters can’t help themselves. And the layering is so much smarter than I think I realized as a kid.
Anyway. I’m going to reread the whole series. I really loved coming back to The Summer Tree and seeing how much I misremembered… and how much was actually fully engrained in my brain.
Bad Tolkien rip off. Not sword of shanara bad, but not good either.
Got better by the end. Perhaps I'm getting too old for the "young person magically transported elsewhere learns many things etc."-type stories...
Overall I enjoyed this book. The beginning was patchy and it was difficult to get through it. The 40% to 90% range of the novel is quite good though. It does best when it sits in a scene and doesn't push ahead too quickly. The protagonists were the least memorable, it was the members of Fionavar that carried the book.
adventurous
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Content Warnings
Graphic: Rape, Torture, Murder, War
Moderate: Sexual content
*3.5 stars*
This is my first Guy Gavriel Kay book, and I had mixed feelings about the whole thing. However, I liked it enough to continue to read the series, and also enough to give Kay's newer books a try. So I'd say it was a success, overall.
Kay's book features a fascinating mythology. Sadly, the characters who carry the story forward are mostly unspectacular, and there is little to no overlap between the myths and the present-day happenings, emotionally speaking. it felt like two different story sets were clumsily glued together, and for me everything felt too disordered to really come together into a coherent whole.
While the history/epic-narrative like prose might have worked for some (I read it in a buddy read where most people seemed to appreciate it), it really isn't to my taste. I find it hard to be drawn into the epic when the sense of grandeur is from feels incongruous because (a) it's a portal fantasy for five kids on one hand and (b) falls flat because I don't care enough about anybody to believe in all the great stirrings of emotion from another. So yeah, not my thing.
Nevertheless, there were enough moments of interest (particularly in the last half of the book) to make up for the lack of compelling characters and the prose, and what I've read so far of The Wandering Fire seems much more promising.
This is my first Guy Gavriel Kay book, and I had mixed feelings about the whole thing. However, I liked it enough to continue to read the series, and also enough to give Kay's newer books a try. So I'd say it was a success, overall.
Kay's book features a fascinating mythology. Sadly, the characters who carry the story forward are mostly unspectacular, and there is little to no overlap between the myths and the present-day happenings, emotionally speaking. it felt like two different story sets were clumsily glued together, and for me everything felt too disordered to really come together into a coherent whole.
While the history/epic-narrative like prose might have worked for some (I read it in a buddy read where most people seemed to appreciate it), it really isn't to my taste. I find it hard to be drawn into the epic when the sense of grandeur is from feels incongruous because (a) it's a portal fantasy for five kids on one hand and (b) falls flat because I don't care enough about anybody to believe in all the great stirrings of emotion from another. So yeah, not my thing.
Nevertheless, there were enough moments of interest (particularly in the last half of the book) to make up for the lack of compelling characters and the prose, and what I've read so far of The Wandering Fire seems much more promising.