(This will serve as my review of the entire Fionovar Tapestry- Spoiler pearl clutchers beware- there be dragons of plot and theme reveals here!)Confession: I am a bit of a Requiem fanatic- I own several versions of the Verdi, the Mozart, the Brahms, and copies of the Cherubini, Berlioz, Dvorak, and Benjamin Britten Requiems and I am always looking for more. I am fascinated with each and every one of them personally, but when it comes time to try and explain my obsession to someone else, I always play them the one that seems to translate its meaning to everyone: Verdi’s Requiem for Alessandro Manzoni.In order to show this to my boyfriend, I took him to a performance of the Verdi last year at the Kennedy Center. To be honest, he mostly sat there with a polite “so, when can I go to the bathroom?” look on his face through the opening Kyrie. I was starting to worry about what kind of really horrid sci-fi B movie I was going to have to sit through to make up for putting him through this- but not for very long The minute the chorus hit the Daes Irae, he practically leapt out of his chair with excitement at its awesomeness. He was a percussionist for many years, and he spent the rest of the movement happily drumming out the beats of Hell and Damnation, gasping with the screaming descent of the chorus falling into the abyss, anticipating Verdi’s next lightning strike of devilish terror.And then the main Daes and the call to Judgment of the Tuba Mirum ended, succeeding to the soaring solos and pleading instruments of the Liber Scriptus, the Quid sum miser and so on. But he wasn’t happy until the Daes returned- sitting tense until he heard the shocking first slam on the timpani announcing the theme and then leaning forward in his seat again, as happy as a clam. I believe the young Guy Gavriel Kay was also a Daes Irae only man. The Fionavar Tapestry is an epic, old school style fantasy trilogy. It is not only epic, it is the most epic thing to ever epic in this whole epic universe, man! And you might think I’m making fun of the book, but that really is sort of its point. It’s meant to gather in as many (mostly Western, let’s be honest) heroic archetypes, stories, and quests as possible into one overwhelming tale that tells all the tales that have ever been told, at their peak of beauty, elegance and emotion. Hence the name, focus, and dominant images of the tale: the tapestry, the weaver, the loom, threads, snipping, spinning, binding, winding. Fionavar is known to fans of Guy Gavriel Kay’s work as the central world of all worlds there are, and is essentially Heaven on Earth. We may live many lives with many flaws, problems, and could-have-beens, but in Fionavar, we will finally live the life we were meant to (“We will meet again in Fionavar, my love, in Fionavar.”) This tale shows us the price of building that heaven.This grand tale, however, cannot happen without five ordinary Canadian citizens who turn out to be necessary for the tale to progress. A mage named Loren Silvercloak and his source, the former dwarf king, Matt Sören, lure them to their world on the promise of two weeks of fun- and of course it turns out that they are needed for much, much more. They are lead through incredible adventure after adventure throughout the three books, finding their places in this new world as they participate in or witness incredible feats of bravery, sacrifice and heroism that pile one on top of the other in glorious succession for three books right down until nearly the very last page of conclusion.And all that action packed, exhilarating action is essentially why I can never really adore these books the way that I adore the rest of Kay’s work: the Daes Irae (or the Hallejuah Chorus, if it happens to be a brief happy moment), being played at full volume, without pause or interlude.Kay is just far too demanding of his readers in this book. In this epic of epics, he constantly presents us with yet another mythical figure, piece of magic, old (it must be old to be revered!) legend coming true every few pages- then spends the next few pages demanding that we stand in awe of his creations. Each character is more beautiful, more perfect, more shining than the last- or, alternately, has committed acts more dastardly and more terrifying than could ever be contemplated. It is tempting to dismiss this as merely teenage Mary-Sue writing- but I’m aware that isn’t the point. He’s trying to draw on the force of so many old legends of our own world and reach something inside us all that respond to these ancient stories by reminding us how deeply important they are. He wants to remind us why the essence of these things are so important.It’s just exhausting, and unfortunately, after awhile, it does get to be a little eyeroll inducing (especially when all the Magical Objects of Power just turn up at convenient moments as Deus Ex Machina- and sometimes that’s literal! This thing is all about the plot, the plot was just embarrassing at times). Even when he’s trying to be funny, he has to surround a brief light moment with pages of stuff justifying it’s deeper meaning. He tries to use the five Canadians to show us how to react properly, with awe and respect, but it just doesn’t work for me. One of the major things that bothers me about this trilogy is how ACCEPTING everyone is of things, how REVERENT they are of this story. Everyone just seems to accept that they should drop everything for this story they’ve fallen in to- no one thinks to tell family back home when characters die in the other world. I think he missed a great opportunity to both connect people into the story and explore some cool ideas about the values of modern culture, and the stories we tell ourselves now- American Gods style, but better. I wish he had given me that way to connect to the characters, because honestly? I felt like three out of The Five weren’t even really given a personality- poor Jennifer and Kim got shafted, and Kevin was reduced to a couple of adjectives. They were taken over by what they were supposed to represent- which I understand to a certain degree, but they’re also supposed to be people. That is supposed to be the pathos of the whole thing. I can’t cry over someone if they’re just a camera angle for me- 90% of the time just telling me how awed I should be. Kay really did mostly fail at the thing that I usually love about his writing- the deeply human, inner aspect of his characters and their actions, how those things make up a resonating story.That’s what I needed here- I need a little Ingemisco, a little Lux Aeterna in my life, I need some Chopin Nocturnes, some Bach Cello Suites. I want some variation in tone, volume, emphasis, some ambiguity in what I should be thinking and feeling while I’m reading. I want that extensive inner contemplation that shows me why a person does what he does- that’s the thing to observe reverently. It’s just as epic as any other kind of piece, but observed within, and spoken aloud in a whisper, quietly, discreetly. Then you can show me the epic battle and expect me to care about everyone involved. I only really saw this in two places in the trilogy, one major, one minor with flaws. The major one was entirely in The Summer Tree: Paul’s backstory of despair (which is why that one got four stars, and the others three), his doomed love for a talented musician named Rachel, and the endless torture he puts himself through for the tangle that their relationship became. We’re taken from the middle to the beginning to the end of his pain in such an amazingly sensitive and deeply felt way- his nights on the Summer Tree are just achingly beautiful, and you feel every reason he’s there with every line. But then that done, he seems to just give it up until the end. Then it’s all magical powers and flying unicorns, gifts of goddesses and Big Ass Swords. Plot, plot plot, things things things- who cares? Speaking of plot, I have to mention this too: I was actually kind of disturbed by what he put Jennifer through for the sake of his plot development/giving her moral invulnerability- I’ve always thought that he used sex for interesting/good things in his books, but not here. I just can’t justify it- the showing of the unspeakably horrible things that happened to her, and especially the tone of the telling did not equal their storytelling value. Again, Kay ramped it up to full, screaming volume, and it made me close my eyes, not listen closer. It made me question the relationship of women and sex in his books all over again, and not in a good way.But in any case, back to my major issue with the book: Eventually, I know that he came to understand the power of the inner world over the twenty-page-long sword fight, and I see the beginnings of that here- but he just hadn’t gotten there yet. He was still too in love with the stories, and not yet with the people inside the stories. I certainly understand that- these are the most amazing stories in the world for a reason, and weave spells over us accordingly. Kay has Arthur, I had my Beauty and the Beast stories. We all have that irrational attachment to stories, before we start to ask too many questions of them, or look at them in a different way. That’s Kay in these books. He’s too excited about sharing every story he knows with us to just sit down and coherently tell us one story that really matters.I’ve always loved reading pre-masterwork pieces of my favorite authors, watching their ideas develop. I can see the beginnings of some of my favorite books here. That’s exciting. That’s wonderful.But he just can’t… quite… hear the rest of the music properly yet.
Being a fan of Guy Gavriel Kay on the basis some of his other works (particularly The Sarantine Mosaic and Tigana, books which I find to be among the best in the fantasy genre), I was incredibly excited to read this, his first novel. I have never been a fan of the "person/people from our world drawn into a fantasy world" type of story; however, I felt that if there was one author who could do it right, it would be Guy Gavriel Kay. Alas, the Kay writing The Summer Tree displays none of the depth of characterization, thematic coherency and relevance or tight plotting of the later Kay , and thus I found The Summer Tree to be a dissapointing rehash of Lord of the Rings, albeit with some sometimes interesting alterations.Thats not to say there's nothing good in this book; there are clearly some great ideas, and some are brought to excellent fruition. In particular, the last fifty pages of the "Rachel's Song" part of the novel was not only pageturning, but also contained a depth of characterization and excellent writing absent from the rest of the novel. The premise, however, is simply too unbelievable; five Toronto law students meet a wizard from another world who informs them of multiple worlds and wants to bring them to one; and yet all of them, besides one sceptic, immediately believe him, are convinced to travel to Fionavar within the space of a page, and immediately fit in as soon as they arrive. This is completely unrealistic writing and characterization (and indeed, the one sceptic loses all sense of scepticism/surprise as soon as we are introduced to him again after the crossing), and indeed, helped to spoil a lot of the novel for me. The one appeal I can think of in introducing "real world" characters to a fantasy world is to explore our relation to the fantastic and how a normal human being would react to these things. This theme, however, is dissapointingly absent. In fact, the main characters being from our world adds about nothing to the story and could have been done without altogether. This is probably the most dissapointing aspect of the story.However, another one is that the world of Fionavar is so pedestrian. If you know Middle Earth, then you have a basic understanding of how Fionavar works. You have your immortal beings who speak in overblown flowery language (a point I will return to later) and who sail west towards a continent no mortal can find, your Dark Lord who's breaking free and rebuilding his fortress, your dwarves who are too greedy and who release a great evil, and on it goes. Kay looks like he's going to add some great political action in here at one point, but all this great political build up turns into nothing and your typical "good vs. evil" story is set up in place. Considering Kay's great success at political games in his other stories, this lack of confrontation is jarring, especially after we've been introduced to all the different factions.Finally, Kay's writing style is clearly overblown here. Kay, in his later books, always has had a poetic style of writing that can actually be quite beautiful. Here, he simply tries to emulate Tolkien; and really, Tolkien's style has only ever worked for Tolkien. From the random poems and songs (Kay has yet to master poetry, as he does later in The Lions of Al-Rassan) to the dissapointingly lame and over-dramatic historical explanations, Kay's prose here comes across as cheesy, indulgent and unnecessary.I'm going to be reading the next two books in this trilogy. Like I said, there is some good in here, and already a twist early on in the second book, while a bit contrived, is sparking my interest. However, Kay clearly hasn't developed his greatness as a writer yet in The Fionavar Tapestry, which is really too bad. I can't say that I reccomend The Summer Tree, though I do reccomend all other Guy Gavriel Kay books. You'll be much better off buying Tigana, Sailing to Sarantium or The Lions of Al-Rassan than this.
What do You think about The Summer Tree (2001)?
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.
—Josh
I wasn't able to finish this novel because I found it bland and awkwardly written.Five kids from the University of Toronto follow a wizard and a dwarf to the magical world of Fionavar, where the king is decrepit, a drought is persisting, and an ancient evil is about to break loose. There's little in the world to set it apart from any other traditional fantasy realm or D&D campaign setting. There's a castle celebration where clowns perform and peddlers sell "colorful goods'; there are taverns where people drink ale and eat meat, cheese and bread. You are out of luck if you want to know what the clowns are doing, what goods the peddlers are selling, or what sets the taverns apart from every other tavern you have seen in fantasy novels.The kids seem to have personalities only when convenient for the plot. They get to Fionavar and have little reaction to traveling across dimensions except to joke about the balconies outside their rooms. Since the main characters weren't that impressed by their journey, I wasn't either. And since they didn't feel like real people, I couldn't care about them.The blandness is partly a result of wordiness. A creature "allowed a smile of lean pleasure to flit across its features," instead of "smirked." Later, we are told that a "realization hit with the force of apprehended truth," instead of... well, I'm not sure what that's supposed to mean. In general, I thought there were a lot of words that didn't mean much.I feel like I'm missing something, since Kay is a renowned fantasy author whom other people have recommended to me. Hopefully I'll feel a better connection with one of his other books.
—Carson Kicklighter
I think it was ok! lolThere is a story in here...but it's filled with too many characters, draws on too many pantheons, has some seriously chauvinistic behavior, and just generally becomes kind of trite.So, a magicical guy from another world and his dwarf friend are in Toronto pretending to be a famous lecturer, and take 5 college students, almost at random, back to their world with them. Why 5 random college students would just do that kind of puzzled me, but okay.Once they get to fantasyworld, of course everyone starts having visions of how 'part of the tapestry' they all are. The tall guy with the charm starts hanging out with the Prince, the Quiet brooder with the king. The smart girl gets snatched up by the priestesses, and the pretty one hangs out at the castle with the court ladies. The loner guy goes native. The Prince decides to 'seduce' a neighboring princess, and the guys help him so now theyre fast friends. The big evil under the mountain blows up, kidnaps and rapes the pretty girl, sparring the world into action.It just seemed so derivative. I could see Ragnarok and Tolkien, the classic 'quest' theme, just too much!
—Maggie K
