Josh's review

The Summer Tree (The Fionavar Tapestry, Book 1)
by Guy Gavriel Kay

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<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/104086.The_Summer_Tree?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=blog_review" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="The Summer Tree (The Fionavar Tapestry, Book 1)" border="0" src="http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1171506609m/104086.jpg" /></a> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/104086.The_Summer_Tree?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">The Summer Tree</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/60177.Guy_Gavriel_Kay">Guy Gavriel Kay</a> 
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8239834?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review"><h3>My review</h3></a>
 rating: 2 of 5 stars 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. 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 (at least in comparison to the rest)was pretty fun.
 
 The book as a whole is a complete 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 some of this story with his talents as a writer and somehow spins a tale of cliché into a slightly 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 started to grow on me. The dialogue between his characters is descent, but a lot of the character actions seemed unbelievable and sometimes downright stupid. That coupled with the obsurdity of the story makes this hard to recommend. I also don't really like the whole "crossover" from real life to fantasy genre. It reminds me of 80's fantasy movies.
 
 So besides the fact that Kay knows how to write, I think this book was simply pretty bad. Tigana was good, but skip this series.
 
 
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/221650?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">View all my reviews.</a>

Josh's review
rating:

bookshelves: fantasy
recommended for: die hard fans of the author
status: Read in December, 2006

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. 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 o...more 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. 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 (at least in comparison to the rest)was pretty fun.

The book as a whole is a complete 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 some of this story with his talents as a writer and somehow spins a tale of cliché into a slightly 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 started to grow on me. The dialogue between his characters is descent, but a lot of the character actions seemed unbelievable and sometimes downright stupid. That coupled with the obsurdity of the story makes this hard to recommend. I also don't really like the whole "crossover" from real life to fantasy genre. It reminds me of 80's fantasy movies.

So besides the fact that Kay knows how to write, I think this book was simply pretty bad. Tigana was good, but skip this series.

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