trin 's review for:

The Summer Tree by Guy Gavriel Kay

2.0

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Five Canadian college students are transported to a magical kingdom, and all of them are pretty blasé about it. Their lack of reaction cued me in pretty early on that I wasn’t going to like this book. None of these characters felt like real people to me; the students are pretty interchangeable (one’s a bit crankier! one has guilt! two possess vaginas!) and they all completely lack one of the most important things, in my opinion, for a successful fantasy novel: a sense of wonder. Nothing about this other, magical realm felt wondrous, so when it was threatened, I couldn’t bring myself to care. Which is a pity, because I felt there were some interesting ideas buried in here: Paul’s story of redemption and self-sacrifice is the type of thing that’s usually right up my alley. But it was stuck under a mountain of overwrought prose and I’m not willing to wade through that.

Plus—FUN BONUS!—there was a brutal rape scene right at the end! *makes cranky face*