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A review by xaymaca
The Summer Tree by Guy Gavriel Kay
4.0
Derivitive? Yes! Full of tropes you've seen before? Yes!
I know these things are normally reasons to avoid this book and the rest of the series but please read on.
The tldr; is It's C.S. Lewis without the sermon, Tolkien without the boring and Thomas Malory with excellent writing and a much better ending.
Let's start with the prose. As with any Guy Gavriel Kay book you have to begin with the writing style because the author has a gift for words. This is one of Kay earliest efforts so it's not refined as it is in his newer works but early and rough GGK prose still blows 85% of the prose of contemporary authors out the water.
Tropes: Dark lords, Dwarves, gifted young people... really? At first you want to laugh but then you realize that these are only ingredients that G.G.K is using to cook a delicious remix version of some very old stories. It's almost like GGK is giving us a chance to hear the stories again, the right way. The book and especially the larger series holds together incredibly well
This remains one of my top fantasy trilogies and will probably reread later this year.
Triggers:
I know these things are normally reasons to avoid this book and the rest of the series but please read on.
The tldr; is It's C.S. Lewis without the sermon, Tolkien without the boring and Thomas Malory with excellent writing and a much better ending.
Let's start with the prose. As with any Guy Gavriel Kay book you have to begin with the writing style because the author has a gift for words. This is one of Kay earliest efforts so it's not refined as it is in his newer works but early and rough GGK prose still blows 85% of the prose of contemporary authors out the water.
Tropes: Dark lords, Dwarves, gifted young people... really? At first you want to laugh but then you realize that these are only ingredients that G.G.K is using to cook a delicious remix version of some very old stories. It's almost like GGK is giving us a chance to hear the stories again, the right way. The book and especially the larger series holds together incredibly well
This remains one of my top fantasy trilogies and will probably reread later this year.
Triggers: