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Alaya Dawn Johnson

The Summer Prince Hardcover – January 1, 2013

by Alaya Dawn Johnson (Author)

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A heart-stopping story of love, death, technology, and art set amid the tropics of a futuristic Brazil.

The lush city of Palmares Tres shimmers with tech and tradition, with screaming gossip casters and practiced politicians. In the midst of this vibrant metropolis, June Costa creates art that's sure to make her legendary. But her dreams of fame become something more when she meets Enki, the bold new Summer King. The whole city falls in love with him (including June's best friend, Gil). But June sees more to Enki than amber eyes and a lethal samba. She sees a fellow artist. Together, June and Enki will stage explosive, dramatic projects that Palmares Tres will never forget. They will add fuel to a growing rebellion against the government's strict limits on new tech. And June will fall deeply, unfortunately in love with Enki. Because like all Summer Kings before him, Enki is destined to die. Pulsing with the beat of futuristic Brazil, burning with the passions of its characters, and overflowing with ideas, this fiery novel will leave you eager for more from Alaya Dawn Johnson.

Print length

304 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Arthur A. Levine Books
Publication date

January 1, 2013
Grade level

9 and up
Reading age

14 years and up
Dimensions

5.5 x 1.25 x 8.26 inches
ISBN-10

0545417791
ISBN-13

978-0545417792
Lexile measure

780L
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Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

*Starred Review* After a nuclear winter, survivors in Brazil build the towering pyramid city of Palmares Tres, where every five years an elected king chooses a queen, lives for a year, and is then sacrificed. Privileged, rebellious young artist June Costa is mesmerized by this year’s election, and she fiercely favors Enki, a beautiful boy from the bottom tier, the world of the algae vats and the perpetual stink. After his election, June and her best friend are drawn into Enki’s world. With only a year to live, he is a brilliant and fast-burning star whose light opens June’s eyes to the serious issues—and corruption—affecting her city, and with her art, she helps to release a surge of discontent. In this YA debut, Johnson paints a brilliant picture of a seemingly lush paradise hiding a core rotted by class stratification, creative stagnation, and disenfranchisement. Evocative, disturbing, and exhilarating, this story leaves much for the reader to ponder, from the nuanced characters to fascinating central themes, including the impact of technology and the role of isolationism in a perilous world. Like leaping into cold water on a hot day, this original dystopian novel takes the breath away, refreshes, challenges, and leaves the reader shivering but yearning for another plunge. Grades 9-12. --Lynn Rutan

Review

"In her YA debut, Johnson (the Spirit Binders series) depicts a future that's recognizably Brazilian and human...With its complicated history, founding myth, and political structure, Palmares Três is compelling, as is the triple bond between June, Enki, and Gil as they challenge their world's injustices." -- Publishers Weekly, starred review"As the trio dances-often literally-around one another, June must negotiate between the extremes of stasis and post-humanism, learn to see beyond herself, discover the meaning of integrity, and maybe even save her rotten-at-the-core and best-beloved city. Luminous." -- Kirkus Reviews, starred review"In this YA debut, Johnson paints a brilliant picture of a seemingly lush paradise hiding a core rotted by class stratification, creative stagnation, and disenfranchisement. Evocative, disturbing, and exhilarating, this story leaves much for the reader to ponder, from the nuanced characters to fascinating central themes, including the impact of technology and the role of isolationism in a perilous world. Like leaping into cold water on a hot day, this original dystopian novel takes the breath away, refreshes, challenges, and leaves the reader shivering but yearning for another plunge." -- Booklist, starred review"In precise prose Johnson evokes an utterly foreign setting, complete with technologies that push at the limits of what it means to be human, and the relationships that delineate the social landscape are intriguingly unconventional and startling in their intensity. The story itself is thematically rich, encompassing the political nature of art in a time of vast upheaval, the potential of power to corrupt, the tension between tradition and innovation, and the toils and rewards of underground creative expression.... An imaginative and thoroughly realized addition to the sci-fi genre." -- Horn Book"There's a great, fresh audacity to Johnson's YA debut." -- Entertainment Weekly"Rife with political turmoil and seeped in culture, this unique and highly fantastical dystopian romance is both intriguing and imaginative. Johnson excels at building rich and gorgeously complex worlds, and her prose shines with a sophistication that's uncommon in YA literature. This beautifully written novel will likely find a home with fans of Alison Croggon and Rachel Hartman." -- School Library Journal

About the Author

Alaya Dawn Johnson's first novel for young adults, The Summer Prince, received three starred reviews, was longlisted for the National Book Award, and was a Kirkus Best Book of the Year. She is also the author of Love Is the Drug. She grew up in Washington, DC, attended Columbia University, and now lives in New York City.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

From THE SUMMER PRINCEWhen I was eight, my papai took me to the park to watch a king die.At first, all I saw were adults clad in bright blues and greens and reds, in feathers and sequins, in cloth glittering with gold and jewels. Carnival clothes for carnival day, but covered in the early morning chill with darker coats and shawls. I looked up at this mass of grandes like I had stumbled into a gathering of orixas. I couldn't see their faces, but I could see their hands, the way they twisted them around each other, or clicked through a string of rosary beads. Some held candles, some held flowers. They were dressed for carnival, but they were quieter than I remembered from other years. The legs and torsos swayed and jostled, but no one danced. A few of the men cried. For the first time in my life, I knew a carnival without music.I held my papai's hand. He did not look at me. A strange sigh swept over the crowd, like the wind howling past the cliffside during a winter storm. A woman's voice boomed through the park, but I was too young, too close to the ground to understand."I can't see," I said, tugging at my papai's hand.With some difficulty –- our neighbors had pressed forward, packing around us so tightly he hardly had room to turn around –- he knelt. "This is how the world works, June," he said to me. "Are you sure?"I didn't understand his downcast mouth, the crying from the crowd, the austere finality of the woman's voice on our city's speakers. Carnival was supposed to be fun and beautiful. But I knew, because my papai never asked me idle questions, that I was to consider my answer. That if I said no, he would leave me on the ground where I could see nothing I didn't understand, and understand nothing of what I heard. And if I said yes, the answer would change my life.I nodded.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Arthur A. Levine Books; First Edition (January 1, 2013)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 304 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0545417791
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0545417792
Reading age ‏ : ‎ 14 years and up
Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ 780L
Grade level ‏ : ‎ 9 and up
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 14.6 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 1.25 x 8.26 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,437,167 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,307 in Teen & Young Adult Fiction about Being a Teen (Books)
- #2,761 in Teen & Young Adult Science Fiction & Dystopian Romance
- #2,842 in Teen & Young Adult Dystopian

Customer Reviews:
102 ratings

About the author

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Alaya Dawn Johnson

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Alaya (pronounced ah-lie-ah) lives, writes, cooks and (perhaps most importantly) eats in New York City. Her literary loves are all forms of speculative fiction, historical fiction, and the occasional highbrow novel. Her culinary loves are all kinds of ethnic food, particularly South Indian, which she feels must be close to ambrosia. She graduated from Columbia University in 2004 with a BA in East Asian Languages and Cultures, and has lived and traveled extensively in Japan.

(And you can email me, too: alaya [a t] alayadawnjohnson [d o t] com)

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3 star		6%
2 star		9%
1 star		1%

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Top reviews from the United States

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A Brazilian dystopian with a female Banksy of a herione

Reviewed in the United States on December 20, 2021

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The first time I read this book was as an ARC when it first came out and I couldn't stop thinking about it. THE SUMMER PRINCE was one of the first diverse sci-fi-fantasy books I ever read and it totally blew me away. It's set in a dystopian matriarchal society in a futuristic Brazil, where all of the leaders are women and everyone old expects to live to two hundred. They elect their kings in an elaborate, Hunger Games-like ceremony every five years, and the king, in turn, chooses his new queen one year later: on the day of his sacrificial execution.

Our heroine, June, is an activist/artist, kind of like a female Banksy. She does all of these elaborate art pranks and one of these is at the very beginning, with her friend Gil, to help elect the underdog choice: a boy from the very worst parts of Palmares Tres named Enki. The prank works and the three of them end up first as glamorous poster children for the opulent party scene, and then as icons of rebellion. As the year goes on, the three of them become incredibly close: Gil and Enki become lovers and June starts to fall for him too, all the while, his fate hangs over the three of them like the sword of Damocles.

I think I loved this book just as much the second time. I loved the way Brazilian culture and the Portuguese language are woven into the story. I liked the heroine's passion for art, and how it ends up taking a more political bent as she sees more of the injustice that's inherent in the system that she's been blind to because of her privilege. I liked how there wasn't really a lot of slut-shaming, and how all of the characters in this book felt like real people making real decisions in this fantastic backdrop. It takes a while to get into, but I think the heroine sells the world-building, and her melancholy and wistfulness end up making this a pretty devastating read, especially as the story winds to the end.

I was a bit torn on whether to give this a four or a five. It's not a perfect book, but it's still a very, very good one, so I've decided to round up because I've never read anything like it before and I still love it.

4.5 out of 5 stars

One person found this helpful

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xtina

Creative but sloppy

Reviewed in the United States on June 22, 2013

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Yet another YA dystopian fiction. I can't keep my hands off this stuff, even though I'm getting more and more grumpy with each one I read because they are all so similar and predictable. But something about the idea of a world not so unlike ours, gone terribly wrong, keeps the doldrums at bay and continues to draw me in (against my better judgment).

Anyways. This book was typical in many ways: it features a feisty female protagonist with Special Talents (she's an artist) who has a forbidden romance with a boy who is doomed to die; the world has recently been blown to bits after a series of (presumably) nuclear incidents and the new civilization that has emerged from the dust seems idyllic from the outside but is actually deeply whacked and oppressive (shocker).

A brief plot summary before I get into what's different about this one and why, despite the unique take on this genre, this was still ultimately a dud for me. This takes place in what used to be Brazil, I believe, in this giant city that exists in some type of pyramid structure, with the wealthiest/most powerful living on tier 10 at the top, and the lowly poor folks all the way at the bottom (there is a catchy word for the bottom tier that I cannot recall presently). (If you need a visual, I envisioned it looking like the White City of Gondor. Could be way off though.)

The city is ruled by women. I guess they decided after the nuclear holocaust that men had done a pretty good job ruining everything for...pretty much all of civilization heretofore, so, no more men in charge. Every summer the city votes to elect a "summer king" who rules alongside the queen, and then at the end of the summer, the queen slits his throat in a grand ceremony that all the city attends. As the dying king takes his last breath, blood splurting everywhere, he has to select the new queen. So the king has the power to choose the next leader, but, tragically, it will be the last thing he ever does.

Now that I have set it up for you, those of you who read these books can probably figure out the rest of the plot. This might come as a shock, but our girl June (the protagonist), falls hard for Enki, the summer king. They bond over their mutual love of art. Very tough situation for all involved since Enki has a death sentence.

One thing that was weird/unique about this book is that every character in it is bisexual, yet the topic sexuality is never overtly addressed--not once in the entire book. It's just a given. When June's father dies, her mother marries a woman. Enki has affairs with both men and women throughout. And so does pretty much every other character we hear about. I thought it was kind of jarring that the topic of sexuality was never actually directly addressed in the book, because the author DOES address literally every other major difference between the old world and the new. June pontificates endlessly about race (white people are pretty much gone now that North America is a wasteland), gender (women are now the gender in power and everyone accepts it since men are blamed for ruining the old world), religion, politics, etc., but never touches on the fact that suddenly everyone and their brother is bisexual now. It was clearly an intentional move on the author's part and I felt vaguely manipulated by it, which was off-putting.

The main problem I had with the book was that it seemed sloppily put together. I could tell the author had done her homework with the world building, but the execution was a mess. Very confusing, lots of strange terms being thrown out with no context, not enough description for me to really visualize what the city or world looked like (which is why I had to substitute Gondor), etc. It sort of read to me like an early draft, so that was a bummer. Another problem, which pops up in 99.9% of these books, is that I didn't feel our girl June had any sort of distinct voice, and neither did her loverboy Enki. All the characters had one or two key "traits" (June is a feisty artist; Enki "loves" his city), but no one seemed at all developed, and when you combine the lack of character development with the confusing world building, it was just kind of a mess, and a rather boring one at that. I almost gave up on this a few times, but it's a pretty short book so I eventually manned up and powered through.

All in all, I will give this 3 stars I guess. That may seem generous, and it is. This gets points for originality (I liked that women were in power and the eerie ritual of the summer king was a nice gory touch).

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Catriona Easton

Confusing and Intriguing

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 19, 2013

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An amazing novel for young adults. It has a twisting plot that leaves you always wanting to find out what happens next. It is full of rich descriptions and tantalising tidbits of a history that is not fully resolved until the end.

2 people found this helpful

nadia

The kind of book that inspires you to create something

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 23, 2015

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Beautifully written

Fraser Simons

Real, beautiful, and raw. Cyberpunk at its best

Reviewed in Canada on November 21, 2016

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This is a beautiful story. The protagonist is believable and complicated and deals with her emotions in a way that takes you along for the ride. This is cyberpunk at its best, a futuristic vision of a beautiful culture and a overlay of biotech that allows for the unoppresed to live both an opulent life, as well as unlock hidden organic potential already there.

Everything about this book was amazing to me, especially not being aware of any of the cultural aspects today. I finished it in a day and re read it only a month later, I consider this a must read for any sci fi and cyberpunk fan

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