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Cover Impressions: Pretty. Yay, no whitewashing. Natural hair on a woman of color!

The Gist: Summer king gets elected, summer king gets killed - still don't understand why. June is spoiled brat who causes trouble and calls it art.

Review:

WARNING: This will be ranty. If you don't like swearing, please move on to another review - this one is not for you.

This book broke me. And not in the "oh my god this is so good nothing will ever compa More...

Initial reaction: Oh man. Considering this was one of my most anticipated reads of this year, I feel a bit at a loss for words. It really disappointed me despite going through the collective novel because of the lack of flow in the narrative and connectivity with the characters. I thought there were some brilliant images and drawing of the world here, but it wasn't enough to save the novel for me, alongside some areas where I had other significant problems.

In the end, I feel "The Summer Prince" More...

This is me reading the summary...

Paragraph 1: Woooaaahhhh O__o

Paragraph 2: UhhhHHHHhhh *__*

Paragraph 3: Aaawwwww ^__^

Paragraph 3 (last line): AHDSGFRJSADJFSH x___x *dies*

Publication date: ARRGGHHHHGGGG!!!!!

I have so many bones to pick with this book, but I'd do my best to start at the beginning. First off, why the Summer Prince as the title? Enki, the man June loves, is a Summer King or a Moon Prince (i'm not entirely sure what the difference is, since the author was never very clear), but he was definitely never a summer prince.

And that's where I get into my next issue. I have never had to guess so much about what was going on while reading. I had NO idea at times, and would just sort of assume t More...

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Why do I constantly do this to myself? I see an eye-catching cover and immediately decide to read a book despite negative reviews. I have to give Scholastic some major kudos because that is one eye-catching cover. The Summer Prince suffers from too many problems and I just couldn't enjoy this book.

The Summer Prince takes place in a futuristic Brazil and so the characters speak Portuguese. There are so many times that the author uses Portuguese terms and phrases wit More...

Once my eyes grazed over the first words that composed the first line of the book I was sucked in. I could not look away from such a beautiful story that painted people of color brilliantly. I absolutely love the protagonist because of her imperfections, her liberated personality and her relationships. She is unpredictable, and realistic (to me at least, and her place in her World makes sense.) The story from her eyes was worth listening too. Her voice was so brilliantly constructed that I finis More...

The Summer Princetore my heart out. I mean that as viscerally as possible without being actually literal.

It all starts with the worldbuilding. This is genuine sci-fi at its best, a whole new world fully realized from the tiers of the pyramid city to the verde and its catinga to Tokyo 10 and its immortal datastreams.Palmares Três is a real city in these pages, and it makes everything about the book so much truer.

The themes in this book!: technology is at once deadly and beautiful, art struggles w More...

You can read more reviews at my blog, The Armchair Librarian!


When I first saw the title, I thought this was going to be another book about the fae. Imagine my surprise when I start reading and find out it's a brilliant dystopian novel set in Brazil.



I know, Brazil.



I wanted to read it based on that fact alone. Well, that and the gorgeous cover. It sparkles! How often do you see a beautiful character with a gorgeous, realistically proportioned woman who isn't white? This was a first for me. Let's t More...

4.5 stars.

Complex, ambitious, vivid, complicated, passionate. Art, life, death, progress, age. This book is so many things, so deftly woven together.

PROS: I love how amazingly interconnected the setting and themes were to the characters. June is refreshingly multi-faceted and at times contradictory -as real people tend to be- and we're not only told she loves art but we are shown how much she loves it. In fact, she comes to discover new aspects of art and what it can do when she meets Enki, and More...

Alaya Dawn Johnson’s YA debut, THE SUMMER PRINCE, is definitely not a typical dystopian sci-fi novel. Filled with beautiful descriptions of the power of art and music, this novel will transport you into a pulsating and energetic world filled with Brazilian samba, spider bots, and performance-art.

June Costa is the best artist in Palmares Três, a vertically structured pyramid city, rising from the middle of a bay in what was once Brazil. Four hundred years after a nuclear apocalypse has destroyed More...

A beautiful, heart-wrenching story that will set you on a thrilling ride well into the night. June is an aspiring artist in the city of Palmares-Tres, set in a future world that has risen from the ashes of nuclear war and has installed a political system run mainly by women. Enki has become the summer king, but June sees more than just a beautiful man in Enki. She sees a fellow artist and collaborator, someone who understands what it means to make art. Together, they will spark a movement that w More...

June has grown up in a giant glass city. In this future world where older men are rare and a queen and her "aunties" rule, June and her best friend Gil revel in parties, making art and generally soaking up whatever pop culture has to offer them.

But then the new Summer King is elected, and Enki has ideas of his own that will take June into a world of deception and body modification, daring and art and a terrifying kind of love that makes you do things and understand things that maybe you're not q More...

I really enjoyed this book. Was the plot sometimes a little light? Did some parts fall a little flat? Yes.

But that can be overlooked in favor of what the book did well.

June is a non-white, complex character who is both cowardly (and aware of it) and fearless. Her desires (for Enki; the summer king, for recognition as an artist, for her father) often conflict, and her response to those feelings are understandable even if they are many times diappointing.

The world building was amazing, with a viv More...

I really enjoyed this book. I almost gave it five stars but stopped short for just a few tiny reasons.

The language, tone, and characters are rich. The story felt like a nice piece of milk chocolate for my brain, with the samba dancing, creation of art, and the cultural language. I savored it all. I felt the fire that was Enki - loved him as much as his followers did. I loved that sexuality and sexual orientation weren't a "big deal" as they are often a "big deal" in young adult books. This is a More...

I fully agree with the reviewers who noted that the concept is amazing but the execution is problematic. I was so excited to read The Summer Prince, and ended up disappointed.

There are hints of incredible world-building that are frustratingly undeveloped. Tensions are set up (between the under-30 "wakas" and the older "grandes," between those who want to open the society to new technology and those who don't, between the different classes of citizens in Palmares Tres, between individual characte More...

Sometimes I imagine the end of the world.

I imagine I’m a Queen. Odete, sitting in a bomb shelter somewhere on the coast of Bahia, in a country that had once been Brazil, and trying to force a new world from the screaming mouth of the old one. What wouldn’t I do? What wouldn’t I create? Who wouldn’t I sacrifice, if it would keep the world from ever dying again?

So I take my lover, my king, and I put him on a pedestal and I cut him down.
A man, like the ones who ruined the world.

And so, Palmares Tr More...

June lives in Palmares Três, a city in a futuristic Brazil that considers itself the most beautiful city in the world. It's ruled by matriarchs, with a ceremonial king elected every five years to reaffirm the queen with his death. June and her fellow young citizens aren't entirely happy with their government. But the young have even less power in a world where people live to be hundreds of years old. Enki, the new Summer King, wants to use his death to make a difference. June wants to make art.

T More...

The first time I read anything written by Alaya Dawn Johnson I was fourteen years old. She wrote my most favourite fanfiction of all time. I’m not going to go into details here but it was Sailor Moon, and involved chickens, and accidental nudity and traveling between worlds and magic and painting.

She also wrote another amazing one without any fantasy that involved Shakespeare and peaches.

To say I wanted to get my hands on this book a lot is an understatement. So when it was at ALA this past Janu More...

This book is haunting and immersive. June, the main character, is not the most reliable narrator, but her experience feels realistic to me as that of a teenager in a society of secrets. I'm so glad the ARC was part of my box at ALAN.

Several of the other reviewers said they don't understand why the Summer King dies, but I thought it was quite clear by the end. It wasn't explained completely at the beginning, but June was also too young to have it fully explained at the beginning of the novel, and More...

So I've seen a lot of positive reviews for this book so far and I don't want to dissuade readers from checking out this book. However, I'd like to give my own fair opinion of the book to warn those with tastes similar to mine. Alaya Dawn Johnson does an amazing job creating a fantasy, utopian world in the city of Palamares Tres. The writing is descriptive and much of Johnson's world is refreshingly original. Much of her novel deals with the political tensions of a futuristic, female-dominated mo More...

There were parts of The Summer Prince that I just loved and parts that confused me. I loved how different this was from other YA sci-fi novels: it's set in futuristic Brazil, and the background to the setting contains elements of Brazilian culture and the Candomble religion. Also, the society of Palmares Tres is obviously feminist, something which I haven't found much, if at all, in other recent YA dystopias. The novel just had a completely different feel to it than many others of the genre. The More...

1.5 stars

It pains me to give this book such a bad review because I had very high hopes for it. Let's start off with the good. I loved how Johnson made an effort to create a futuristic Brazil but unfortunately the writing made it extremely difficult for me to visualize it. Another reader commented that the writing lacks transitions and I definitely agree. The writing is not smooth and I was really frustrated because of it. It lacks coherence.

As for the characters, I really did not care. June, th More...

SHAME ON SCHOLASTIC!!!!!
Boy do I have a rant about this book. It is listed as Teens and YA and published by Scholastic. Shame on them. This book deals with very adult themes and even suggesting teens and YA is appalling to me. When I think of Scholastic, I remember the little flyers they used to send home from school to order books. This is definitely NOT a book that should even be associated with them. There are so many sex scenes and other adult situations that I can't believe it is being pass More...

Before I really get to talking about the book, let me just say that I really wasn't able to get into this book as much as I thought I was going to be able to. It has a lot going for it though. Alaya is a very creative writer, and The Summer Prince is a book that felt really unique and interesting. I just wasn't grabbed by it in the way I would. But I will explain all that as I go.

As I mentioned, the story is actually pretty unique. The idea of a futuristic Brazil where they still have what some More...

June Costa, a young artist in the dystopian, future world of Palmares Tres, Brazil, gets caught up in a romance with the new Summer King, Enki, and the politics of the city. Being a big fan of sci-fi and dystopian novels, I have to say that I was disappointed in this book. The author does a great job of creating her vision of futuristic Brazil, but drops the ball a bit with the storyline, focusing too much on the romance and not enough on what could have been the fascinating politics and society More...

First off let me say, I received this book for free through Goodreads First Reads. A big Thank you to them!

This story was extremely unique. It was set in the lush "futeristic type" city of Palmares Tres in Brazil, and the Author described the surroundings in a very visual way....Amazing.. I shall bow down to you, Alaya Dawn Johnson !
What's so different about this book compared to others was that this particular distopian world was founded and ruled by women. hmmm, interesting right?!? But, ever More...

Wow! It has been a while since I have read a truly original novel written for teens. While this one technically could be filed into the dystopia category, it does so in a unique way. The setting is post apocalyptic Brazil- many years into the future. The place is Palmares Tres- a city that is completely walled in with a glass pyramid (I see it as a huge version of the Louvre I.M. Pei- but that is just my frame of reference). Society is matriarchal and highly stratified. June Costa, is a waka- ba More...

THE SUMMER PRINCE was admittedly one of my most anticipated titles of 2013. It has diversity, science fiction, a dash of romance, fantasy, and a female-dominated society (okay, that’s something that I shouldn’t admit to loving to see in books). I went into this book ignoring the negative reviews I saw that might have led me astray. I went into this book with high expectations – high expectations that were soon crushed under the weight of disappointment.

CONCEPT OVER EXECUTION

The strongest part of More...

Umm, well...what a weird book. I'm not even sure I know what to say about this one. And I'm not sure I can apply the star system to this novel, but I'll try. I loved the premise of The Summer Prince. After reading the description I got really excited to read it, because it seemed such an interesting, unique book. I don't think I've ever read anything that took place in a culture so different from mine. So after the initial excitement I think it is understandable that I'm severely disappointed.

I More...

I decided to read The Summer Prince based on the recommendation of Ellen Kushner and John Scalzi. I’m glad I did, I’m not a frequent reader of young adult fiction, but now I think that might be a mistake. It did take me a little while to get into the swing of this book, but I'm glad I stuck with it. Alaya Dawn Johnson is slow in laying down a rhythm and a melody in her pages and I stumbled along for a bit before my feet found the steps. Once I did, I enjoyed the rich and intricate dance she led More...