You’ll notice that the cover on the left doesn’t match the title of the book. That’s because The Summer Tree is in fact the first book in a trilogy called The Fionavar Tapestry, and my copy has all three parts of the trilogy bound together in a single volume. I list them as separate books, however, because even within this single volume they are broken up with separate title pages, acknowledgments, tables of contents, etc. It’s three books bound together as one; that’s my policy on this stuff and I’m sticking to it.
With that out of the way, I can talk about the book itself. It’s the second thing I’ve read from Canadian fantasy author Guy Gavriel Kay, the first being a quite good novel inspired by Italian history called Tigana. I didn’t realize until I was more than half-way through that The Summer Tree was Kay’s first novel. Good thing, too, because it’s not really all that great. Certainly not deserving of all the acclaim plastered all over the cover. Well, to be fair, there are some interesting things in it, and I’ll start with those. The mythology, which seems to be a blend of Greek and Norse, is complicated, but also consistent and fairly well thought out, and seems to integrate pretty well into how the world functions as a whole. Also, the idea of bringing four university students from Toronto into another dimension is an interesting and unusual way to begin an epic high fantasy trilogy (despite the fact that an American Saturday morning cartoon was already doing it around the time this book was published). But that’s about as far as I get with this thing, and those factors (combined with the facts that I’ve got all three books in one volume, and they aren’t very long, and hey, I’ve already started so why not finish) are pretty much all that will keep me reading.
The characters are flat. What can I say? It seems like, since, or maybe because of, Tolkien and the later weird writings of Michael Moorcock, writers of high fantasy don’t seem to feel the need to have their characters behave like human beings, or speak in realistic dialogue. I can understand if your character is a dwarf from a fantasy world, that okay, you’re going to take some liberties. I can live with that, no problem. But say your characters are five university students from Toronto. It just doesn’t seem proper to strip them of their critical faculties. Kay’s characters are so intensely credulous that I can’t imagine how they functioned well enough in the world to survive long enough to get to university. These idiots believe everything they are told, and take everything seriously. And! With a few exceptions, they speak like Wally and the friggin’ Beav. In 1984!
Alright, so high fantasy isn’t so character driven as literary fiction. I get that, it’s been drilled into me by friends and even professors that I have to let go of that when I read a work of high fantasy. It’s tough, but I can do it. So then we have a few other issues to deal with. First of all, how can all these idiots from Toronto fight as well as warriors who have trained their entire lives, ride horses as well as tribesmen from the plains, and so on. Well, they can’t, except that it’s a trope in high fantasy that everybody is in some way great or special, and so they have innate abilities that allow them to operate as though they are Bruce Willis in a Die Hard sequel.
Right. And the history. I understand that the events of this trilogy in many ways focus on the re-emergence of characters and situations from a thousand years previous (seriously, how many civilizations do you know that can stay that coherent and organized for a thousand years? But I digress…), and yet before those things come back on the scene, all anybody talks about is what happened a thousand years ago. It’s as though nothing of any real importance happened between then and the “now” of the book. A tribesman of the plains kills a herd animal in a dramatic way, and it’s the first time it’s been done in a thousand years. A prince crosses a river in a dramatic way, and it’s the first time it’s been done in a thousand years. Nobody eats unless it’s a feast, everybody cries like a baby at every little thing, great distances are traversed in a matter of a couple days, and the only two emotions anyone ever feels are “loss” and “longing.” I mean, give me a fucking break.
I’m going to have to hurry up and finish these books before they make my head explode with frustration. I was actually looking forward to this, because Tigana was so good, but now I’m far less excited.
The Summer Tree was my seventh selection for The Canadian Book Challenge. Next up is The Wandering Fire, also by Guy Gavriel Kay.
