Take a photo of a barcode or cover
A review by hank
The Summer Tree by Guy Gavriel Kay
3.0
Melodrama everywhere! This is my 4th book of Kay's but his first. I can now see the origin of everything I like and don't like about Kay which strangely is the same thing. My favorite book of his The Lions of Al-Rassan, I was swept up in the grandiose, foreshadowed, battle the entire book was aiming at. The melodrama for that one was just perfect for me. Tigana was too much. Everyone pining and dedicating their whole lives and souls to Tigana got overbearing quickly. Under Heaven did not have any, outside of one small passage and it was dull because of it.
The Summer Tree was thick with portent and then not, and then you could cut the syrupy emotions with a knife and then it was normal. Both the good and the bad melodrama wrapped up in one book. You could definitely see Kay try to figure out how much or how little to put in.
Some of the characters were a bit cliche (Diarmuid) and Jaelle made absolutely no sense to me. There were far too many ideas in the book, Mages, Summer Tree, evil exploding from the mountain, unicorns, mythology, witches, lost brothers, monsters, dark woods, gods, etc
Mostly I enjoyed the friendship aspects of the book. Each of the 5 seemed to find their place and companions, one way or another. The world was well formed with lots of (too many?) of places for Kay to explore.
I liked it but not enough to read the next 2 and will spoil it by reading the Wikipedia entries so I can find out what happened. I think I am done with Kay. I only gave one of his books 4 stars and his writing style is just shading too far towards flowery for my taste. None of the books are bad, just not my first choice for entertainment.
The Summer Tree was thick with portent and then not, and then you could cut the syrupy emotions with a knife and then it was normal. Both the good and the bad melodrama wrapped up in one book. You could definitely see Kay try to figure out how much or how little to put in.
Some of the characters were a bit cliche (Diarmuid) and Jaelle made absolutely no sense to me. There were far too many ideas in the book, Mages, Summer Tree, evil exploding from the mountain, unicorns, mythology, witches, lost brothers, monsters, dark woods, gods, etc
Mostly I enjoyed the friendship aspects of the book. Each of the 5 seemed to find their place and companions, one way or another. The world was well formed with lots of (too many?) of places for Kay to explore.
I liked it but not enough to read the next 2 and will spoil it by reading the Wikipedia entries so I can find out what happened. I think I am done with Kay. I only gave one of his books 4 stars and his writing style is just shading too far towards flowery for my taste. None of the books are bad, just not my first choice for entertainment.