The Summer Tree by Guy Gavriel Kay

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


There were a number of very interesting parts to the world building here, and a handful of distracting things as well.

Matt the dwarf… was one example of the struggle. There were anachronistic aspects like the naming convention that distracted from just flowing with the story. Given the original copyright for this is from the mid 1980s, there were other things from that time that really showed through in the story. There were at least two instances of very casual misogyny – and possibly more – that stood out when reading this with a modern eye.

Having said those things, this is still of the ‘sword and sorcery’ genre that I loved so much when I was younger. My own sense of nostalgia carried me past a lot of things that might stop other readers.



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Assassin’s Apprentice by Robin Hobb

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


This was not the first time I’ve read this book. I picked it up and got it via Kindle for this read through for both convenience and saving my old paperback I plucked off the shelf from back before Y2K.

I remember reading it and being very taken with the story. I related to difficult choices and bad results. The fantasy aspects were a bonus – and it was less ‘action’ oriented than some of the other things I’d read.

On this re-reading I found that I could still relate to difficult choices and bad results, but the political aspects of the story were more clear to me. A friend also pointed out that this story was (vaguely) around the same time / trend as when game of thrones came out.

This is still a really good fantasy story with interesting world building. A little slow for my taste – and it wraps up ‘a’ story, but not the whole story. Traditional fantasy trilogy stuff.

Clearly I liked it to a greater degree than many books I’ve read recently. I went out and got the second one!



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