The Summer Tree by Guy Gavriel Kay

[lightreads]

The Summer Tree by Guy Gavriel Kay


My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Epic fantasy. Five Canadians go across to another world, where an ancient evil is rising again.

Okay, I have to admit, this took a while. It's been a bit since I read srs bzness epic fantasy, and this is about as srs bzness (and earnest) as they get. It's all portentous droughts and visions making the seer's hair turn white and "And thus it came to pass that . . ." and so forth. Takes some getting used to again. That, and the way the characters just get shoved back and forth across the epic fantasy chessboard. You know what I mean.

But then. But then zap, it was magic. I can point to the sentence where it happened. I was in the parking lot of Home Depot, okay, and it was really really cold, and my own freaking guide dog was not speaking to me (not only did I make her wear the doggie snow boots, but I made her wear them in public!). So I was not in the epic fantasy place, you know? But I picked up the book and I went to my mark, and the first sentence I read was, "So open, the wind could pass, light shine through him." Some people who have read this book are now going 'ah. That. Yes.' I think what happened was all that rich, affected epic fantasy language at last had an adequate theater to stretch its voice in, and it did, and it was beautiful. The sort of writing that feels like poetry because it's talking about magic so well.

The book still has a completely emotionally unbelievable hook, and it's still heteronormative as all get out in a few quietly yucky ways. But it got me for a few pages there, on the summer tree, and then it had its hooks in me on to the bitter end.

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