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A review by gorgonine
The Summer Tree by Guy Gavriel Kay
3.0
*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.