madzthedragon 's review for:

The Summer Tree by Guy Gavriel Kay

2.0

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I started this series because I really loved Tigana. I think the premise of The Summer Tree was very interesting because it reminded me of an adult version of Narnia or, my childhood favorite, Inkheart. I also enjoyed the writing style which was full of beautiful descriptions and added suspense to the story. However, listening to the audiobook, I often found myself losing focus, which is not normal for me. I think it’s because the main characters felt very two dimensional, interchangeable, and hard to emphasize with/ hard to care about. I also felt like the scenes were not balanced well, and either felt a scene was too short or way too long. One of the characters is absent for the majority of the book, and the whole time I was wondering what was happening with him; maybe that also distracted from the rest of the plot. When we finally come back to him, his scenes are basically in the past and then lead up to what had already happened with the rest of the characters. This scene scrambling just felt odd because his scenes could have just been interspersed with the others and the timeline would have felt more natural. Anyways, I’m glad the sequel had a summary of the plot of The Summer Tree in the beginning because I definitely missed some things, but I’m not sure if I’ll make it to the third book.