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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
65 of 70 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A stunningly underrated trilogy,
By david bowers (CO USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Summer Tree (The Fionavar Tapestry, Book 1) (Paperback)
I've read many - at least a thousand, certainly - fantasy books, and The Summer Tree (and the entire trilogy) is simply one of the very best. The 'Fionavar Tapestry' is so painstakingly crafted that it must have been a labor of love (and probably a first book), and I can never understand why I don't hear far more about it. The language is frequently lyrical, far above the usual standard for fantasy writing; "words more strung with fire", to use one of Kay's own phrases, than any but the likes of, say, Bradbury's. The whole really IS a tapestry; a complex and intricate interweaving of different characters, plot strands, and fantasy elements. And so tightly and carefully woven that it's unbelievable - half a sentence in one book can subtly foreshadow a major event in another book three hundred pages later - yet it's never slow, as I'd expect given all the connections and resonances. You just don't normally find this level of plaited storytelling, even in the endless 300 pound series. Obviously I was blown away by this trilogy - will probably read it every few years for life - but many of the Amazon reviews were negative and I'd like to address some of the comments. First, a number of the reviewers seemed to be giving Kay low marks mostly because he hadn't written some other book. For instance, some would have preferred a book in which all the characters came from the one world, not some from Fionavar and some from earth. Or some would have preferred a book that was more like Tolkien, or less like Tolkien, etc. I'd say that these are simply valid alternate choices as to the form, and he should be judged on the job he did, not downgraded because he didn't write another book entirely. A few reviewers thought the plot cliche or even PREDICTABLE. I'll just flat-out claim that noone could have predicted his plot; it was simply too complex and detailed. It could only be honestly considered cliche or predictable if you simplify it to the level of Good vs. Evil; who's going to win? If that's the criterion then many, if not most, fantasy books just fail. I do agree with some reviewers that it seemed like the 'earthlings' adapted amazingly well to an entirely new existence on another world and seemed to cut loose of their pasts with almost no remorse. Though I'd almost bet that Kay had that all worked out in his mind, not enough justification made it into the pages of the books. He did give us a few reasons(and hints)to think that some of the 'earthlings' had no strong personal ties back home, and that the one who did frequently thought about that tie, (his father), but I too think that he could have fleshed that out more. And I agree that the two female main characters weren't
33 of 39 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Cliche and utterly preposterous...,
By
This review is from: The Summer Tree (The Fionavar Tapestry, Book 1) (Paperback)
...yet surprisingly captivating at the same time. Something about The Summer Tree held a sort of addicting quality and despite every reservation in my mind telling me not to like this book, I found myself quite entertained as I read it. While it is among countless other fantasy novels that follows a Tolkien-style storyline, I thought that it did a better job of it most other such stories that I have read, yet it is certainly not comparable in quality to Kay's later works.My first introduction to Kay was the stand-alone novel, Tigana. It took me a while to really get into Tigana, but I really started to appreciate Kay's eloquent style, fleshed out characters and whit in dialogue and plot development. It wasn't until after I finished Tigana and thought about it that I realized how great of a book it is. I decided that before going on to read the rest of his works, I had better read Fianovar. I didn't quite find the same reading experience here. While the characters in Tigana are well thought and believable, those in the Summer Tree are quite the opposite. The reader is given the names of our five heroes right from the get go but Kay doesn't feel that it's necessary to really introduce any of them. He goes on about these five as if you should already know them. Soon comes the mage, Loren, who will take them into Fianovar. This part I found laughable, as only one of the characters really seems to question the sense of this mage appearing out of nowhere and taking them to another world. The other four follow Loren blissfully into Fianovar and seem to go on once they get there as if nothing had really happened. Only on a few occasions do these four characters reference their own world, Earth, in comparison to this new fantastic world that they seem to accept so easily. Dave, the one character who was the exception from the beginning, was the only character of the five whose story I really enjoyed. Having been separated from the other four from the time they all entered Fianovar, Dave's story happens later in the book and almost feels like a completely separate tale. His reactions to the events that follow his arrival are much more believable than his counterparts and I thought his part of the book with the tribal hunters was very refreshing. The book as a whole, as I mentioned, is definitely a cliché. We have a dark lord imprisoned after a war long ago, struggling to break free. This dark lord has insidious minions, sent out to foil the opposition and wreak havoc in preparation for his arrival. There are also similar races to Tolkien, such as the lios alfar, who are essentially elves with a different name, and of course the stout and noble dwarves. And one fact not to be forgotten: the fate of this world of course rests in the hands of the five protagonists that the mage has brought there. Despite these obvious discrepancies, Kay imbues this story with his talents as a writer and somehow spins a tale of cliché into a fairly enjoyable yarn. He has the tendency to make you visualize his environments and settings with picturesque quality and towards the end, some of the characters do start to grow on you. The dialogue between his characters is one strong points that Kay had even with this novel, which I find to be a weak point for many other fantasy authors. Overall as I read this, I started thinking of the story as a legend being told. You know how in fantasy novels there is always some great war or fantastic tale that happened hundreds of years before that story actually took place? This story reads like one of those tales and in that sense, it does make the obsurdity of it all that more interesting. If you count yourself as an avid fan of fantasy, I would recommend that you pick this up, if not to take it seriously, than at least to read it for being counted as a classic. If it is your first venture into Guy Gavriel Kay, then don't be too judgmental as the quality and consistency of his later books really does improve and I count Kay among the fantasy greats.
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
5 Canadians in King Arthur's Court + Unicorns.,
By
This review is from: The Summer Tree (Paperback)
If you have read some of Kay's later works--Tigana, the Last Light of the Sun--stop there! You have seen what he has to offer. Don't look here, back in 1984, when he wrote a book without really knowing what he wanted to say or how to say it. Where do I begin? OK, think of it this way: 5 Canadians in King Arthur's Court. These grad students from Toronto are whisked away into a distant land, where they find themselves to be somehow 'chosen' to save the world.OK, OK, a bit cliche, but I can handle that as long as the plot is good, the characters worthwhile. Well, they aren't. They're not quite stock characters. I wish they were, because then they would at least have the recognizability of the overly painted masked characters from a medieval morality play. Instead, they're just basically anonymous. And then the magic starts. Not the magic that great stories work on your brain, making you want to stay up all night just to get to the next chapter. No, this is the magic of Fionavar. Objects will just pop up out of nowhere and we're told that they have some great power. OK, cool, I guess. But could you at least tell me something why this thing got here? Does it have a history? A reason? No. And that's it. The plot stumbles along, seemingly skipping pages of very necessary explanation. You can't tell if this is some sort of attempt at artistry and mystery, or if Mr. Kay just forgot about it. It doesn't matter, though. You're still forced to manually restart your suspension of disbelief and try to get back into the book, hoping that by page 321, it will have been worth it. So you trudge along. And then a dark lord comes in with orcs to try and take over the world. And then a unicorn comes to save the day. Wait a minute: Unicorns? Yes. Unicorns. Really. Well, one unicorn, actually, but it doesn't matter. And it is written to be some sort of grand moment in the history of the world, and supposedly it is, but you don't really care, because this is a tiny, fake world about which we know nothing, and one which we haven't seen enough to care about at all! On the tinyness: don't let the map fool you. This is not some grand work of imagination. The entirety of Fionavar is about the size of Lithuania. Not ancient pagan Lithuania; Modern, Russia-dominated, Cold-War shrunken Lithuania. You can ride across this imaginary world in about 3 days--on horseback! He says so himself. As it happens, most all of the important scenes of the book are just like the unicorn stunt. Some ridiculous, probably avoidable dilemma is resolved by the sudden appearance of a predictable, cliche stroke of good luck. Ugh. To his credit, Mr. Kay does have some skill at describing places and feelings. It appears in his later works. All in all, however, this is a frantic, sloppy thing. Don't bother reading it, and do not DARE call it a "classic."
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