Take a photo of a barcode or cover
A review by snukes
The Summer Tree by Guy Gavriel Kay
3.0
The start of this novel was so slow that I had to put it aside for awhile, because the audio was putting me to sleep on the long morning commute. I loved Kay's Tigana. Reading another of Kay's fantasies with roots in my own world (nearly... 1980 feels like an eternity away from this vantage point) seemed like an obvious fit.
I think part of the lack of pizzazz comes from the very traditional feel of this fantasy adventure. Kids - college-age in this case - get swept up from their mundane lives into another world, one which - of course - turns out to be deeply troubled and in desperate need of their help. We know there's something special about ONE of the five students (Kim) from the beginning. The rest are apparently only along for the ride. What's more, the reason given for them being brought into Fionavar is essentially as circus animals, a novelty to be on display at the 50th anniversary of the king's coronation. Who WOULDN'T agree to go along for that ride??
For those first few chapters, I found the students nearly indistinguishable from each other. (It didn't help that the British reader tried to give them all American accents and did an appalling job.) Nothing about any of them stood out especially, though. Not until the five break up and go separate ways do they get at all interesting, with one joining ranks with a young prince on a mission to seduce a princess, one deciding to give his life to save the kingdom (like, literally his life in payment for the world not being destroyed), one accidentally apprenticing to the local swamp witch, one getting kidnapped by a giant swan, and one falling in with the local nomadic tribes. WHY would they decide to split up in this strange world that has been only very inadequately explained to them? I have NO idea.
A lot that happened in this telling felt convenient rather than well-plotted, but it's also easy to see that this book is setting up for the bigger story to be told in books 2 and 3. I'll probably come back to those eventually, but I think I'll dip into some of the edgier current fantasies first.
I think part of the lack of pizzazz comes from the very traditional feel of this fantasy adventure. Kids - college-age in this case - get swept up from their mundane lives into another world, one which - of course - turns out to be deeply troubled and in desperate need of their help. We know there's something special about ONE of the five students (Kim) from the beginning. The rest are apparently only along for the ride. What's more, the reason given for them being brought into Fionavar is essentially as circus animals, a novelty to be on display at the 50th anniversary of the king's coronation. Who WOULDN'T agree to go along for that ride??
For those first few chapters, I found the students nearly indistinguishable from each other. (It didn't help that the British reader tried to give them all American accents and did an appalling job.) Nothing about any of them stood out especially, though. Not until the five break up and go separate ways do they get at all interesting, with one joining ranks with a young prince on a mission to seduce a princess, one deciding to give his life to save the kingdom (like, literally his life in payment for the world not being destroyed), one accidentally apprenticing to the local swamp witch, one getting kidnapped by a giant swan, and one falling in with the local nomadic tribes. WHY would they decide to split up in this strange world that has been only very inadequately explained to them? I have NO idea.
A lot that happened in this telling felt convenient rather than well-plotted, but it's also easy to see that this book is setting up for the bigger story to be told in books 2 and 3. I'll probably come back to those eventually, but I think I'll dip into some of the edgier current fantasies first.