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piperita 's review for:
The Summer Queen
by Joan D. Vinge
It's been a while since I read this book, but since I just wrote a review for the first book in the series, I thought I might as well write down some thoughts on this one.
The only strengths of this book are the strengths of the original. The world-building, the cultures, the political clash, the themes of human greed and environmentalism.
Everything else is considerably less well-edited or thought-out.
I don't care that it's dreary or sad or that marriages fail, considering the events and trauma of the first (and second) book that's hardly unexpected. I just found that I didn't care or feel emotionally invested in any of it. While Moon wasn't a perfect character in the first book, she did develop into a strong and sympathetic person in the end. All of her autonomy however was completely drained in this book - she's entirely tied up in the dudes in her life and that seems to be the end of her as a relevant character. Her daughter seems to be her replacement, but she just came off as mildly annoying and lacking in any of the traits that made the teenage Moon in Snow Queen charismatic. I don't even remember what the daughter's name is anymore!
Also this book was weirdly sexually obsessed. Everyone had a kink. You know what kind of a character they were, in fact, based on their cliched bedroom habits. I suppose the original Snow Queen had a similar flaw but considering how much more preoccupied this book is with sex, it's much more apparent. I started skipping the sex passages because I wasn't invested in the characters anymore and thus the sex seemed awfully trivial. Randomly, one of the biggest reveals in the book ended up embedded in one of these unnecessary sex scenes. Why?
The first book made fairly great strides in feminist topics. This book just dials it all back. Most of the interesting characters who actually go and CHOOSE to do interesting things are dudes. The rest of the women spend time humming and hawwing about something something feminine powers/bebbies/motherhood while being entirely reliant on these interesting, autonomous dudes (a few women start out as independent and interesting, but fear not, they quickly meet their demise at the hands of the great bebbies). Look, I actually buy the argument that some of the traditionally-feminine pastimes and "powers" can be interesting; but unlike the Snow Queen, this book completely fails to make you believe that sentiment.
That being said, some of the new cast (not all of them dudes) are pretty interesting and great additions to the story. I wouldn't have minded if this book chose to focus a lot more on these new characters while putting the old cast more in the background. The old cast, did, afterall, have a whole two books to themselves already and had gone through a ton of development already.
Considering that this book builds further on the fantastic foundation of the Snow Queen I can't really give it less than 3 stars. If you loved the world of the Snow Queen, and you want to see more, I wouldn't say that this book would ruin the experience. But there is a definite drop in quality.
The only strengths of this book are the strengths of the original. The world-building, the cultures, the political clash, the themes of human greed and environmentalism.
Everything else is considerably less well-edited or thought-out.
I don't care that it's dreary or sad or that marriages fail, considering the events and trauma of the first (and second) book that's hardly unexpected. I just found that I didn't care or feel emotionally invested in any of it. While Moon wasn't a perfect character in the first book, she did develop into a strong and sympathetic person in the end. All of her autonomy however was completely drained in this book - she's entirely tied up in the dudes in her life and that seems to be the end of her as a relevant character. Her daughter seems to be her replacement, but she just came off as mildly annoying and lacking in any of the traits that made the teenage Moon in Snow Queen charismatic. I don't even remember what the daughter's name is anymore!
Also this book was weirdly sexually obsessed. Everyone had a kink. You know what kind of a character they were, in fact, based on their cliched bedroom habits. I suppose the original Snow Queen had a similar flaw but considering how much more preoccupied this book is with sex, it's much more apparent. I started skipping the sex passages because I wasn't invested in the characters anymore and thus the sex seemed awfully trivial. Randomly, one of the biggest reveals in the book ended up embedded in one of these unnecessary sex scenes. Why?
The first book made fairly great strides in feminist topics. This book just dials it all back. Most of the interesting characters who actually go and CHOOSE to do interesting things are dudes. The rest of the women spend time humming and hawwing about something something feminine powers/bebbies/motherhood while being entirely reliant on these interesting, autonomous dudes (a few women start out as independent and interesting, but fear not, they quickly meet their demise at the hands of the great bebbies). Look, I actually buy the argument that some of the traditionally-feminine pastimes and "powers" can be interesting; but unlike the Snow Queen, this book completely fails to make you believe that sentiment.
That being said, some of the new cast (not all of them dudes) are pretty interesting and great additions to the story. I wouldn't have minded if this book chose to focus a lot more on these new characters while putting the old cast more in the background. The old cast, did, afterall, have a whole two books to themselves already and had gone through a ton of development already.
Considering that this book builds further on the fantastic foundation of the Snow Queen I can't really give it less than 3 stars. If you loved the world of the Snow Queen, and you want to see more, I wouldn't say that this book would ruin the experience. But there is a definite drop in quality.