The Summer Tree

Cliché as they come.

Guy Gavriel Kay s fantasy trilogy about a land called Fionavar is a little over 20 years old. I ve never heard of this Canadian author before, but an online friend was so adamant that I should read it that he ordered the books from Amazon and had them delivered to me as a gift.

The trilogy is made up of Book One: The Summer Tree, Book Two: The Wandering Fire and Book Three: The Darkest Road. Since it s essentially one huge story, I ll be talking about all three books in one review.

In The Summer Tree, five Canadian university students Kevin Laine, Kimberly Ford, Jennifer Lowell, Dave Martyniuk and Paul Schafer - were spirited to Fionavar by a mage named Loren Silvercloak of Brennin. They were invited at attend the anniversary of the king s ascension to the throne, but not long after their arrival, it became clear that there was more to it than what they were originally told.

We learn that Fionavar is the first of all worlds. All that happen there will reflect in other worlds, including our own.

A thousand years ago, Fionavar survived a war against the evil god Rakoth Maugrim the Unraveller. Rakoth breaks free from his prison and is bent on finishing what he started - destroying the land.

Loren and Brennin Seer Ysanne would readily confess that Loren came into our world for Kim Ford, whom Ysanne dreamt will succeed her as Seer. What they didn t foresee is that the other four also had specific roles to play in the Tapestry.

The Wandering Fire, which is the middle book that will make little sense without the other two, is where Kay moves all his characters into attack position for the next book. It sees the Arthurian mythos joining the tale, along with deities and symbols from various Northern and Celtic myths.

The Darkest Road is where it all comes together and makes sense. This is where we get to appreciate how intricately woven the tale is as a whole. Light triumphs over Dark, of course, but the journey there is ultimately fulfilling to follow.

I m not a big fan of High Fantasy. Most fantasy literature is either Tolkienesque in depth and length, or just sorry imitations of it. I must confess that by the time I got to The Two Towers, I ve forgotten what Fellowship if the Rings is about and summarily gave up trying to read it.

Another friend commented that The Fionavar Tapestry is too much like Lord of the Rings and it's true. You have the big bad guy, a group of people unwittingly caught in a fight against the villain, a good wizard who help the good guys, another wizard who ends up batting for the other team, the return of exiled royalty, a nation of horse riders, dwarves, a race that will no doubt bring Tolkien s elves to mind, and a lonely journey made by a short guy to the very heart of evil.

Kay, who helped Christopher Tolkien edit The Silmarillion, deliberately set his novels in Tolkien s tradition of High Fantasy to show that there is still room to come up with something that follows a formula, yet throw many surprises of its own at the same time.

The prose is beautiful without being overbearing, and despite the many characters running all over the place, Kay still manages to make you care deeply for them. Often times, you don t realize it until the characters go off and sacrifice themselves for the greater good.

There aren t that many books out there that make me cry so much reading. The last one that comes close is Anita Diamant s The Red Tent, but that is just one book and this is three.

Every time I re-read The Fionavar Tapestry, I am reminded that there is hope for High Fantasy yet.

For more on Guy Gavriel Kay, visit his website at www.brightweavings.com.

(2006)

It took me a while to get into this book. I've always disliked books where the heros get magically transported to another world. I do understand why authors choose to go this route. It allows the heros to be in the same place as the reader, learning about the world with us as we progress through the story. But it still always annoys me. And a bit more than normal in this book. The main characters are brand new to the world but always seem to know things. Just because they are magic and special for some vague reason.

Despite this, I started to really enjoy this novel. It's just so beautifully written. There is a particularly emotional scene that really made me say, “Wow.” But then the author just takes back the thing that happened! Ugh. It really ruined the power of the scene.

I found the book enjoyable overall. But it never lives up to its potential.

DNF after chapter 8. Idk how far in that was

I just found this book very boring. It might have been Simon Vance. But either way, I might come back to this at a later time but so far just not nearly as interesting as the other four GGK novels I've read.

I hate read this one

The best chance this typical “high fantasy” novel had of standing out was the five college students from our world who were pulled into Fionavar. We could have experienced the world through their more relatable point of view.

Unfortunately, I don't think the idea was used to its full potential. None of the five really bring anything of their modern selves to the party. They blend into their new surroundings quickly and without any problem adjusting to the world of Fionavar. It seems like a missed opportunity.

4.0 out of 5 stars

I have wanted try out Guy Gavriel Kay's work for quite a while but haven't known where to start. The collective wisdom I've seen says to skip his first books, a trilogy called The Fionavar Tapestry. They say that he hadn't quite found his voice yet and that the story plays as a cheap Lord of the Rings knock off. I didn't necessarily want to read his best novels first and be disappointed later on, so I ignored the advice and dove in at the beginning. I was pleased to find that this first book was quite compelling and enjoyable. Yes, it's a bit uneven and the similarities to Tolkien are present, but I set these things aside because I saw sparks of brilliant storytelling. The world building and character work are particularly strong.

At first the characters seem interchangeable (and weirdly unskeptical when a wizard offers to whisk them away to another world), but as the story unfolds, each character embarks on their own emotional journey and I'm fully invested in it. I look forward to seeing how it all plays out in the next two books and am excited to read his subsequent (supposedly better) work.

See this review and others at The Speculative Shelf.

I really enjoyed this book. Guy Gavriel Kay does a wonderful job telling this story and introducing you to this entirely new world. It took me a while to get into it–names were a bit confusing and just figuring out what the heck was happening was a bit of a challenge, which is why I knocked it down one star. However, once the story starts going, it just takes you away. The characters are very interesting and I cannot wait to pick up the second book!

The beginning of this book is very awkward and I can see why some people give up on it before finishing, but if you can get past the shaky beginning, it is more than worth it to keep going. It takes a while for the clunkiness of the storytelling to make way for the truly wonderful one it turns into.
I always roll my eyes when a book cover claims it's ‘like the Lord of the Rings'. I have yet to come across the mythical book that is ‘just like the Lord of the Rings'. LOTR being my absolute favourite fantasy, I have never found one that compares. While The Summer Tree doesn't quite compare story-wise (it is it's own story - and that's a good thing), it does actually compare quite well with the Tolkien's poetic and mythic writing style. It feels like you've come across some ancient book, telling you a historical story about the mists of time when gods, goddesses and mythical creatures roamed the earth and magic shaped its destiny. The words are beautifully written, and invokes a sense of magic all it's own. I was quite impressed by the beautiful language used, at times so poetic I wanted to re-read it again. It truly took me to another time and place.
I wasn't as impressed by the characterization of the characters in The Summer Tree, at least at first. The main characters are not given a lot of time to form and become more than just names on the page, although by the end I felt I knew them a bit better. More time could perhaps have been given to the characters and filling them out more as people we care for before they are thrown into the epic journey they go on, would have made that beginning less awkward. Another niggling point was how easy they just went along with it all...I feel like in a kids book you can get away with that, but adults questions a heck of a lot more than children do when they are suddenly transported to another world and are asked to take on some pretty hefty roles when they get there. These characters just seemed to go with it, which I found odd and jarring at times.
However, by the end, I found myself warming to some of the characters and on the fence about others, which means that they really grew in the telling of the story. It took 3/4 of book to get there, but I really enjoyed Dave's storyline, short though it was. So I suppose the characterization wasn't a complete misfire.
The reason I gave The Summer Tree 5 stars, though I did have a few issues with it, is that it is as close as I've come to a similar writing style to Tolkien, something I truly love about LOTR, and also that I really enjoyed about the book. So much so, that I forgave some of the issues I had with the story itself. On that note, I did find the story quite compelling in it's own right. A mix, in my mind, between LOTR, Narnia Chronicles, and strangely enough, the anime The Twelve Kingdoms, it is a mix that works really well and ends up creating a world and story all its own despite borrowing from some pretty mainstream sources. I've drifted from reading a lot of traditional fantasy because I find them so similar to each other, but this book really stood out from them all, even though it uses very traditional elements, and I can't pinpoint exactly why.
In the end, I found I really enjoyed it and also found myself stealing every extra minute to read it and staying up until my eyelids were drooping to get even a little further in the book - which means it certainly had my attention.
Not sure why it took me so long to read The Summer Tree - I've had the trilogy on my shelf for years, but I'm glad I did and am looking forward to the rest of the trilogy.

This is definitely one of the best Fantasy books ever written... It is a beautiful homage to [a:J.R.R. Tolkien 656983 J.R.R. Tolkien http://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1329870573p2/656983.jpg]'s [b:The Lord Of The Rings 15369 The Lord Of The Rings (Radio Collection) J.R.R. Tolkien http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1166672332s/15369.jpg 3462456], showing how amazing and powerful is the Guy Kay's knowledge on Mythology, Fantasy and Tolkien's works. [b:The Summer Tree 104086 The Summer Tree (The Fionavar Tapestry, #1) Guy Gavriel Kay http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1348810485s/104086.jpg 3238632] has not the same flowery prose as seen in [b:Tigana 104089 Tigana Guy Gavriel Kay http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1348738842s/104089.jpg 1907200], but Guy Kay certainly knows how to write in a beautiful way.I confess that it took a while to be hooked. At the beginning it's a little bit hard to believe in the five main characters, the university students Paul, Kevin, Dave, Kimberly and Jennifer. But as soon as we see the narrative being brightly woven, we can also observe the amazing growth of these characters. Guy Kay knows how to touch the reader who wants, for a while, to be a fantasy hero in a different world. Well done, well done, Guy Kay... now I'm getting ready for the next book, [b:The Wandering Fire 104088 The Wandering Fire (The Fionavar Tapestry, #2) Guy Gavriel Kay http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1348816263s/104088.jpg 1136221].

Graphic rape scene in the end. Really disgusting.