The Summer Country

I couldn't finish his "Stone Fort" series as it failed to hold my attention so I started this book with misgivings. I was wrong. Despite the cutesy YA-style cover this is a raw adult fantasy with teeth and claws to spare. It is also an extremely well written piece of work as Hetley proves to be a master at creating a mood or forming an image with just a few well chosen words. His world-building is culled from the bleakest of Celtic myths while the peculiar magic that dwells therein is both believable and highly visceral. Furthermore the way he incorporates one character's mental health issues into the story---making them both a handicap and an asset----is very well done. I look forward to reading the sequel!

I decided to try this book because I'd enjoyed his dragon stories for the strong women.. unfortunately, the women in this book leave some to be desired, especially at the start, and the pacing is so slow that it feels like the whole book happens in the last quarter. I think there's a decent enough story under all that, an interesting modern+faerie sort of tale along with the struggle of the sisters to deal with their inner and outer demons, but honestly I'm not sure I would have even finished the book if I hadn't enjoyed his other novels.

Extremely dark and violent, with very little redeeming light. The main character is victim of long term sexual abuse, and its a memory she deals with every day. She also has a very troubled relationship with her sister, a slightly older and sexually comfortable person. The story starts with the heroine being stalked on her way home, and then presumably saved, although that perspective is called into question later. Her rescuer enlightens her to her heritage, but before she can fully come to terms, she is kidnapped and pulled into faerie, or "the old county."

I felt truly uncomfortable in Maureen's narrative, and feel the author pulls out all the traditional female tragedy stereotypes in the bluntest and most obvious ways. It was awkward show more at times, and she dwells on her abuse in a way that seems unreal and hollow. The frequency and detail felt like someone was imagining what it would be like to live with abuse rather than actually writing about the experience. Her sister and her relationship is immediately portrayed as angry and jealous. The level of mutual venom displayed within pages of meeting her sister makes it hard to believe they would have lived together at all. Add the rape and pregnancy experience at the end, and I started to get extremely annoyed by the man-feminism. Both Maureen and her sister come into their own power in a very bloody way, minimal epiphany way. show less

Intense. Eventually after a bit of a dragging start. I'm always a bit wary of fantasy novels that use sex as prime motivator for any of the characters to do anything. Having all the main characters driven primarily by lust in various forms doesn't work very well even if you're an author as talented as Hetley. Having one of the characters suffering from the trauma of a previous rape doesn't help make it comfortable reading.

Maureen is our main heroine and she's still somewhat damaged about being raped by her sister's boyfriend when she was a young girl. Her sister doesn't know. Meanwhile over in the fae we have triplets and a deprived kobold who has been rejected by all the pretty women and now wants domination over every woman he can lay show more his hands on. The sisters turn out to have potent Old Power blood which makes them even more attractive to the fae, and despite knowing nothing about faereland they soon get beguiled there. You can pretty much imagine how the rest of it works out. There's nothing graphic, but it's still pretty uncomfortable reading in places.

Maureen uses and overcomes her fears far to readily given how demanding they'd been in the opening third, although some of this is explained by a fae glamour it doesn't make it any more acceptable. The rest of the story does get interesting though, with some neat faere magic interacting between the different dynamics and politics. It is however easily the weakest Hetley story I've read, lacking some cohesion, having a feeling of plot inconsistencies and generally not being as enthralling as the others. AT least part of this is following multiple character lines in a relatively short novel. So none of them are as fully developed as would otherwise have been possible. Trying to explain the fae motivations through their viewpoints also doesn't work very well. The story did end well in an intriguing place so I probably will read the sequel at some point. show less

A portal fantasy with celtic trappings. Really, its a fairly ordinary book which fails to stand out in any way, though managing never to be too dull. The basic storyline is a reasonably interesting one, and there are some character relationships which are fairly compelling, but I don't think the writing is able to rise to the level to fully deal with the themes the author is trying to deal with.

Cliché, cliché, cliché. This is what I get for judging a book by it's cover.

I needed to take a break from this one to read Kushiel's Dart and I've found I really don't care if I go back to it or not, so I'm moving my focus to other books in the TBR mountain.