Katherine
Honestly, I think I want to wait to truly review this until I’ve read all three books. This is clearly a series that NEEDS the entire trilogy to get a better grasp on everything. Overall though, for THIS book? Wow. The prose is gorgeous. There is clearly going to be SO much to this story that has yet to come. The Summer Tree was a setup book. And it has done that job beautifully.
As an overview: The set up is very typical 80s fantasy to me. It has many of the old tropes with a chosen one, and seems to have some things that fit directly in LOTR (elves, pretty much. Also, Not-Gandalf and a dangerous dark land, all-powerful dark entity versus the light etc). However, it’s certainly not a clone of LOTR. There are MANY mythologies that are woven together into this, from Arthurian legend to Norse to Celtic. It’s a portal fantasy which is a bit weirder to me- I haven’t read that many portal fantasies, as many tend to be set in their own world entirely.
The first third of this book is SLOW. And for most of that third, things just happen to the main characters and they go along with it. That did bother me some. The characterization later, though? It’s so rare to see men in fantasy novels get to be emotional and empathetic. There’s still some characterization sorely lacking, but given how slowly all of this has played out, I’m hesitant to say more until I read the whole trilogy.
Another aspect that I wanted to mention is that the lack of male gaze has been astounding to me. This is a book published in the 80s. So many of those are *incredibly* misogynistic. Now, Fionavar is still a largely patriarchal society. And I don’t love how often the men are “sent” women. There’s one character in particular that is absolutely a womanizer… but in general, the women aren’t described boobs and butt first. In fact, many of the characters are hardly described at all, appearance wise. Mostly you get that they have dark/fair hair or dark/lighter eyes. The women mentioned are mostly mothers and random courtesans, but there are some very powerful female characters as well. The main female characters seem to have extremely important roles to play, though I’m hesitant on where one of them is going so I’ll have to see how the series continues.
Honestly, I think I want to wait to truly review this until I’ve read all three books. This is clearly a series that NEEDS the entire trilogy to get a better grasp on everything. Overall though, for THIS book? Wow. The prose is gorgeous. There is clearly going to be SO much to this story that has yet to come. The Summer Tree was a setup book. And it has done that job beautifully.
As an overview: The set up is very typical 80s fantasy to me. It has many of the old tropes with a chosen one, and seems to have some things that fit directly in LOTR (elves, pretty much. Also, Not-Gandalf and a dangerous dark land, all-powerful dark entity versus the light etc). However, it’s certainly not a clone of LOTR. There are MANY mythologies that are woven together into this, from Arthurian legend to Norse to Celtic. It’s a portal fantasy which is a bit weirder to me- I haven’t read that many portal fantasies, as many tend to be set in their own world entirely.
The first third of this book is SLOW. And for most of that third, things just happen to the main characters and they go along with it. That did bother me some. The characterization later, though? It’s so rare to see men in fantasy novels get to be emotional and empathetic. There’s still some characterization sorely lacking, but given how slowly all of this has played out, I’m hesitant to say more until I read the whole trilogy.
Another aspect that I wanted to mention is that the lack of male gaze has been astounding to me. This is a book published in the 80s. So many of those are *incredibly* misogynistic. Now, Fionavar is still a largely patriarchal society. And I don’t love how often the men are “sent” women. There’s one character in particular that is absolutely a womanizer… but in general, the women aren’t described boobs and butt first. In fact, many of the characters are hardly described at all, appearance wise. Mostly you get that they have dark/fair hair or dark/lighter eyes. The women mentioned are mostly mothers and random courtesans, but there are some very powerful female characters as well. The main female characters seem to have extremely important roles to play, though I’m hesitant on where one of them is going so I’ll have to see how the series continues.
