A Shadow in Summer (The Long Price Quartet) (edition 2007)

Eh.

I liked this just fine. I didn't think it was amazing or anything.. I never felt super connected to the characters, and some down right pissed me off. It was a good story, but it fell a little flat for me I guess. I really wanted to like it more than I did... But it just wasn't happening.

It's still getting three stars though, and I'll likely read the next in the series at some point. I know a lot of people really love the series, so I'm hoping it gets better from here. Hopefully there will be less faithless two timing bitches though.. *stabs Liat in the face* ( )

This was an interesting book to read and my first experience with Daniel Abraham. While I thought the book was well written I was not drawn into the experiences of the characters in any meaningful way. The world was interesting and the posture custom was new. The best developed character seemed to be the city itself. Strangely, after finishing the entire novel the city is the only character I feel I know anything about. That said I will be reading book 2 of this series in the future to see if the pace of the plot and the development of the characters picks up. ( )

The review that hooked me: The">http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/138477761
The review that should've hooked me much earlier:
I">http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/69564441

I don't think beginning this series with a marathon reading session while sick was the best approach, since fevers make me to skim faster and I missed some intricacies. Illness also makes me so lazy, such that I was unwilling to move even though I'd hunched down into a painful sitting/crouching/fetal position. Despite that (and despite the visual trumpet-blare of the pompous title fonts, and my current aversion to epics) this was an incredible fantasy story. I skipped ahead and around to follow a character's storyline, just because it was so fascinating. I just finished stumbling through the last bits of the 4 books and I'm going to have to get over my epic aversion to re-read this all properly someday. I would give this series more than 4 stars, a little less than 5 stars.

10 generations ago (which isn't actually all that long, is it? a few hundred years?) an empire fell and now its remnants, called the Summer Cities, still dominate the world with its wealth, based on a fraction of the power it once had. This power comes from control of creatures called andats, 'ideas given volition' is the description from the book I think, that are created by poets; not those laureates who speak at inaugurations or publish slim volumes or, ahem, rhyme stuff ("Stop it! I mean it!" "Would anybody like a peanut?" – that's my kind of poetry), but scholars who strive to completely capture a concept with a special grammar meant for this purpose and hold it in their minds, bending it to their will...magic. The andat takes on the form and personality imagined by the poet, an embodiment of the creator's mind. Unfortunately, once caught and lost, the exact same idea can't be recaptured. If you try, you die. The grammar has to be adjusted to describe it differently if possible; as the years go on, it becomes impossible to find a unique description and the andat, the idea, has to be abandoned. It's possible to bestow an andat upon another person, another poet. Each of the cities has its own poet, each andat's power used to boost the particular trade that is the basis of each city's economy.

The Summer Cities culture is obviously drawn from Asia, with the almond eyes and teahouses, but how beautiful the added touches are! Letters having edges sewn with silk thread are tucked into sleeves; firekeepers maintain braziers along major thoroughfares during cold months; the language consists of as many gestures as words; the suffix -kvo is used for teachers, -cha for respect, and -kya for great affection – grace notes in this wicked awesome story. And man, can this author write. Too many lines that made me pause to appreciate, even in a feverish haze. I wish I had the head to remember quotes to share them, but all I remember is the lift that comes from knowing something is very good.

This first book introduces the world (building it, hah). It begins at the poet school where we learn how they attempt to select the right people to potentially wield andats. Then fast-forward to a young poet sent to one of the cities to be ready to take on the residing poet's andat when the time comes. A plot to destroy the current poet is revealed to be just a feeler. Threading around the plot are all the human relations that complicate everything. There is the expected love triangle, whatever, but better is the delicate hum of Marchat and Amat. Wonderful and quietly sad. Anyway, the feeler plot felt flabby and small until it swelled to include nations and then gut-punches a reader with a series of, uh, punches. In the gut. That final sentence, wow. It's like the whole book was an orchestra just before a performance, sawing bows and turning knobs, an oddly harmonious dissonance (heh, I know, dumb, but when the strings are tuning and don't quite match but all sound like a piece of silk running up your back...that!), and at the last sentence the conductor dramatically raises his baton.... ( )

I liked a lot of things about this (especially the old lady hero! she is so awesome!), but it hasn't quite blossomed into true love yet. I'll see how the next one is. ( )

Interesting. Not entirely unproblematic. ( )