Don’t Read – …on the B.L.

Worth A Read No
Length 383
Quick Review A group of people are magically transported to another realm, which is in the middle of a war.

Reading The Summer Tree by Guy Gavriel Kay | Jumpsuit | Earrings | Watch

My best friend loves Guy Gavriel Kay’s writing. He has been bugging me for about a decade to read one of his books, so finally I did. The Summer Tree was an obvious place to start because it’s the beginning of the Fionavar Tapestry series. Much to the dismay of my best friend, I hated it. Genuinely. The story is interesting, but the writing is horrible. I don’t know where the editor was, but they weren’t doing their job with this one.

Five acquaintances are whisked away to Fionavar for a celebration by magical beings. They accidentally find themselves at the center of a war spanning many lands. The plot is inventive but not necessarily original.

The Summer Tree dives right into the action. Often times, this is a great way of making the reader keep reading. Kay made a grave mistake in having the action begin immediately: there was no emotional investment in the characters. All this stuff was happening to them, and I had no interest or connection to them. Why should I care? They were flat and uninteresting. They are underdeveloped, which does not allow readers to connect with them or even for the characters to connect with each other.

I’m all for fantasy. It’s not my usual genre, but I do love Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. From Kay’s writing style in The Summer Tree, it’s evident he also admires Tolkien. He was trying for a Tolkienesque narrative but had problems carrying it out throughout the novel. On top of that, his descriptions are overly flowery but lack any concrete imagery. The dialogues are clunky and do not feel like anything real people would say to other real people. Kay tends to foreshadow often in a give-it-away style. Simultaneously, he does not explain things at all. Maybe, he’s leaving those mysteries to be spelled out in the other books, but it just feels riddled with plot holes. One of the most irritating aspects of the narrative was Kay’s repetition. I love repetition. It’s an amazing literary device, but he just does not do it well. I think he was trying to be poetic, but came across like he was suffering from short term memory loss.

One of my biggest issues with the book is Kay’s inability to write compelling women. I question if he’s ever talked to a woman. He has no idea how to create female characters with interesting emotions and motivations. There are also bits of odd sexual torture; they are abrupt and make absolutely zero sense. As a rape survivor, it was offense and insensitive. More importantly than that, it was unrealistic. Fantasy or not, sexual violence should make sense and be done in a way that mimics reality.

Kay tries for an epic on the same level of Tolkien’s Middle Earth, Lewis’ Narnia, or Martin’s Westeros, but it echoes hollow. An idea with a lot of promise but a deficient execution. The Summer Tree does not have the emotional wallop an epic requires.

Memorable Quotes
I found no memorable quotes because the writing was painful to read.

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Title: The Summer Tree
Author: Guy Gavriel Kay
Publisher: Roc
Copyright: 1984
ISBN: 9780451458223

Read: No
Difficulty: IV – because it was so painfully bad
Quick Review: A very poorly written novel about a man whose troubled past manifests in serial killing ways.

I have been avoiding writing this review. That would mean I have to think about this novel again, and reading it once was horrific enough. Not because it was a thriller, but because it was just that bad.

I just… It’s… I can’t… I mean I can; I don’t want to… But here it goes.

I was approached to review this novel. I don’t typically read thrillers. I have been trying to branch out, so I said “yes!” I would create a time machine just so I could go back and say, “STOP, DON’T READ IT!” Or go back even further into time and convince Christopher Graves writing may not be his calling.

The basic concept of Sinner is there is this group of violent, religious, women killing vigilantes. A dude named Zeke goes around killing women of loose morals… basically any lady who isn’t chained to the stove with three babies banging pots around her… due to his religious conviction. Come to find out he had a rough upbringing. (Poor white man, your daddy didn’t love you.) The “strong” female characters fight back. Yada yada yada… It’s terrible.

The thing that made me hate this novel straight off is the narration switches between Zeke (creepy serial killer) and the ladies being serial killed or other key ladies in the story. When dealing with women who are being raped… it’s best not to try and enter the psyche of a woman being raped when you are, in fact, not a woman. I yet to read a male author who can portray these scenes well. It falls flat at best. As a rape survivor myself, it was nowhere near realistic for me. It even came across as flippant, disrespectful, and, quite frankly, offensive. Every section where the woman is narrating, it’s hollow from the dialogue to the internal monologue to the description of how she views herself. You want to buy into the characters and feel for them, but Graves does such a poor job in character development none of the characters even approach likable.

Graves’ writing is unfocused, disorganized, lacks cohesion, and reads like a bad high school first draft. The timeline jumps around in a state of confusion. I don’t think he knows how to organize a novel. Timelines don’t have to be linear, but they do need to make sense. Spelling mistakes run rampant. There are grammar and syntax issues. His word choice is questionable at times. Over all, the writing feels amateurish. I can almost imagine him flipping through a writer’s handbook, pointing at a literary device, and thinking yes, I’ll try that one. When there’s an absence of literary device, don’t fret an analogy is just around the corner. It’s not the work of a capable author probing into the psyche of a troubled man… I would be interested in reading that. It reads like an aspiring writer trying to be all of those things.

Total side note… What is with all the female characters winking? It’s obnoxious and unrealistic. What sane woman winks in the middle of awkward silences or at staring strangers or constantly. As a living, breathing woman, I can’t tell you the last time I winked at someone. I can almost guarantee you it was at a small child and not at the creepy dude staring at me in a pizza joint.

Sinner by Christopher Graves will be released April 5, 2018 (tomorrow) for audiences enjoyment(?). Please don’t read it. It’s not even ironically painful to read. It just caused me pain.

Memorable Quotes:
There were none. Too painful.

Title: Sinner
Author: Christopher Graves
Copyright: 2017
ISBN: 9780999643723