The Summer Tree (The Fionavar Tapestry, #1) in Building a SciFi/Fantasy Library

Aug 31, 2008 Stephen rated it it was amazing

Shelves: unique-magic, audiobook, mythstories-and-legends, 1980-1989, fantasy

5.0 stars. I just finished re-reading this book and was blown away by it. This is intelligent High Fantasy at its best. Gay Gavriel Kay is an incredible writer and his world building as fantastic. It is hard to be original in this well-worn genre, but Kay pulls it off and makes his characters and the world-setting unique and fresh.

Highly recommended!!!

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Mar 03, 2015 Sandi rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: read-2015, audio, scifi-fantasy-horror-althistory

I had tried to read this many years before and bogged down but, while the audio version still started a bit slow, the last third of story was very compelling. The only problem with the audio is that there are so many characters and since it is a fantasy book most have somewhat different names. The narration was done by Simon Vance whose female characterizations were not great but overall did a fine job.

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Jun 26, 2008 Vj rated it it was amazing

I looked at several reviews of this book and it just shows why the fantasty genre is filled with so much garbage and why people who read it seem to love it. This book is everything that I remember feeling when I read the Hobbit, or The Great Hunt, or Tigana for that matter. Cay is absolutely brilliant and this trilogy is absolutely magnificent and if you have a brain and an imagination and can think for yourself i recommend you pick this up and actually read the whole book! What a concept! Yes i ...more

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Apr 19, 2018 Liz rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy, 20th-century, epic

I've been meaning to read this book for forever; I've loved everything else I've read by GGK and this is one of those series that everyone has kept telling me to read.
And it's worth it. GGK is JRRT in the best way--he has a sympathy to the complexity of the world and characters in a way that echoes JRRT.
He also...trips over some of the same things that JRRT does, but he's still miles ahead--especially in terms of female characterization--even than many contemporary authors.
If you've ever wondere ...more

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