So… this book didn’t age well. I think that’s probably the first thing we ought to get out of the way. The Summer Tree by Guy Gavriel Kay is the first book in a trilogy and was first published in 1984. And boy is it ever an 80s fantasy novel, and not in a good way. I’ve been sitting on this review for a long time, trying to process and maybe even forgive the book so that I can move on and maybe read the next two in this series. Let’s be clear here; I did not like this book and I struggled to get through it, but I was willing to give it three stars until the last couple of pages of the book completely destroyed any tolerance I had for the derivative, occasionally racist, mostly kinda sexist book that was so very 1984.
Before I get into the book, I feel like I need to defend Kay. I like his books. I really do. Tigana is amazing, and The Lions of Al-Rassan is fantastic. I am so, so glad I read those books before approaching this one, because I wouldn’t ever pick them up if this was the first work of Kay’s I’d encountered. I don’t always like his female characters, I find that they’re a bit stereotypical and not fully realized characters, but he does better than a lot of male fantasy writers. I’m not really in a place to judge, but I didn’t find anything outright offensive in his fantastical portrayals of China and the Middle East, see Under Heaven and The Lions of Al-Rassan. So I know he can do better then what happened in this book. I’ve seen him do it. I just have to chalk this one down to being a first novel, and all of the mistakes and errors that come with it.
Now that we’ve covered that, let’s move on to this book specifically. This, like so many fantasy novels owes a lot of its plot to The Lord of the Rings. It also owes a lot to Zelazny’s Chronicles of Amber and Lewis’s Narnia. And so it’s fairly derivative. I honestly don’t mind this so much. There is comfort in familiarity, and you can always mine old stories for different nuggets of truth. But it does help to know that there isn’t really going to be a new story in this book. We have five people, from our earth, who are pulled into the core world just in time for the great big bad to break free from his prison and start again the great war between good and evil. This book is mostly about establishing the characters and setting up the plots that they will follow as this great war wages.
This sounds great. Honestly, a story like this told with Kay’s poetic prose (even if some of his more annoying quirks are strongest because first novel) sounds like a great rainy day read. Even with the really terrible female characters, the casual Native American stereotypes, and the gross ‘seduction’ of a princess by someone we’re supposed to admire, I could see myself mostly enjoying this. And then there were three pages, three whole pages, of a gratuitous rape and torture scene at the end of the book and I just raged. Especially because one of the other characters magically realizes that oh, hey she can save this woman by magically transporting her away from her captors but only after the three pages of rape and torture happen. So what, exactly, was the point of that? And did I mention three pages of rape and torture?
I have the other two books in this series, I may even get around to reading them at some point. And who knows, maybe the three pages of rape and torture are there for character reasons that won’t make me want to scream, though I doubt it. However, I think you should skip this one.
I have owned this trilogy for years now, because I usually like to start with an author’s earliest works and read my way through their catalogue. Would you suggest I try another of his books first? I would like to give this series a try since I do already own it.
No, read another one of his books first. He’s got a couple of writing ticks that are very um… writerly, if that makes sense, and for the most part they get toned down as he gets more experienced but they’re in full force here. Plus, he gets a lot better at writing women.
Any one of the other three books I mentioned in the review are good, and I would start there. The women in Tigana are kind of… not quite real(?maybe? I don’t really know how to describe it, but there is something about them that just doesn’t feel like actual women, it’s pretty clear a man wrote them) but decent and I really liked the novel. The Lions of Al-Rassan or Under Heaven are much better in that regard, and I think give a better flavor for what he can do with his word choices. Plus, his plots are much more original in those three.
Thanks! I’ve got Tigana already on my TBR. Maybe I’ll start there. Probably not this year, though.
Have you read Joy Chant’s “Red Moon Black Mountain”? I seem to recall that’s where Kay lifted most of the plot from.
I haven’t, at least I don’t think I have, but it doesn’t surprise me that there are a lot of similarities. That period (70s/80s) in fantasy is really repetitive. And portal fantasies were something everyone was doing.
Oh man, that’s a bummer. I remember loooooving this trilogy, but I haven’t reread in ages. I read Tigana when I was 18, and just fell madly in love. It sucks when old favorites become…not.
This is the first time I’ve read it, so I didn’t have nostalgia fairy smoothing things over. It is sad when you grow past old favorites though. Tigana is still really good though.
There’s a “reason” for it all, I guess, who ends up being important in the sequels. But yeah, not exactly a good excuse.