A Shadow in Summer

Good storyline but particularly good because of the setting, a sort of oriental culture, where gestures and nuances of language are as important as the words said. Unusual set up for a modern fantasy series.

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I’ll admit it, I struggled with this work and what to think of it. The first two books in the quartet I really enjoyed. The second two books irritated the hell out of me.

Nevertheless, as much as I was irritated, I half suspect that that was Abraham’s intention. At the bare minimum, Abraham seems determined to leave the reader struggling with the question of right and wrong. In a way, the entire work is like a Michael J Sandel course: you’re constantly confronted by the philosophical question, “What is justice?”

It’s a remarkable fantasy work that does that, and to Abraham’s credit, he never chooses sides. In the tangled scenarios that he paints, there are no good solutions, just different ones. And which one you prefer says more about you than about the actual rightness of the decision made.

Typically, I love books that do that, and Abraham handles the theme very well. No one character is presented as being totally bad. People who do bad things do so with perfectly sound reasons. More importantly, none of them think of themselves as evil. So why was I so irritated? Well, I’ll get to that later.

First off, though, I have to say that if you are a reader of fantasy, you should get out there and get this work if you haven’t already. It’s original in many ways, not least the reason I gave above.

Abraham’s work is the first I’ve read in the fantasy genre which does not mourn the loss of magic. It actually celebrates it. That is remarkable given how many fantasy works deal in the overused trope of the grevious loss of magic fading from the world. It’s not something that strikes you when you read the book; Abraham is so matter of fact about it that you barely notice it. It helps, of course, that his system of magic is far from the one that typifies most fantasy blockbusters.

Another key feature of the work is the amount of time that passes between volumes. Each book picks up some 10 to 15 years after the events of the previous book. This is all too rare, but reflects how things would work in real life. Things happen, people react. The repercussions of the event are immediate and also ripple out far beyond the immediate moment.

This observation, of course, is at the heart of the work and the reason for its title, “The Long Price Quartet”. We see played out over the span of 80 years the results of a seemingly small decision made by a young boy in a garden. Many of the decisions—large and small—made by various characters are picked up again later as their unanticipated effects play out. All of these interweave to build the story and the characters and endows them with a heft and solidity rarely encountered in fantasy novels.

Abraham, the sneaky bastard, also does something that I’ve not notice anyone pick up on yet. Of course, it might all be in my imagination, so take this with a large ladle of salt. But did anyone else think that the book was a subtle comment on American power and the war in Iraq? After all, we also have here a nation that invades another to get rid of its weapons of mass destruction.

That the effect of the andat was to have, in the past, turned fertile country into an unlivable waste land of mutant creatures hints at this link, as does the sterility that occurs from an attempt to raise an andat. Both bring to mind the effect of nuclear weapons and radiation. Another link is the fracticide involved in choosing a new Khai which recalls the Ottoman Empire. Add to that the central importance of the Poets among the Utkahiem, which harks to the importance of poets in Persia. Altogether, these elements brought to mind (well, mine at least) the US invasion of Iraq and its current troubles with Iran.

Of course, Abraham does not write a simple one-on-one metaphor. Nothing as clumsy as that. Here the nation that is invaded is the most powerful nation in the world. However, that it has not been the aggressor does raise the very pointed question: Are you entitled to attack a country simply because you fear that it and its might might one day be used to destructive ends? Are you entitled to kill men, women, and children to ensure that this does not happen, especially if the country has not and has given no indication of being an aggresor? Is it less justifiable if that end result will only last several generations and is not permanent?

Having set out what made the work so good, I must now get to what irritated me about it. The irritation was so great that I had a very very hard time finishing the entire quartet. And now, look away, gentle reader if you don’t like spoilers.

My irritation stemed from the fact that I feel that nothing, but nothing, can justify launching a pre-emptive attack on an innocent people. At heart, Balasar Gice is no different from Osama bin Laden (and surprise, yes, he did think he had good justifiable MORAL reasons for bringing down the Twin Towers) or George Bush (and the parallels to the US-Iraqi war just underscored that similarity for me). And yet, Balasar Gice is presented as if he is justified in what he does, that the end justified the means. That totally pissed me off.

Even worse, that Maati the well-meaning if destructively ineffective poet is demonised by the others around him… That chafed worse than cheap scratchy underwear.

I will hand it to Abraham that this irritation might have been the specific result he was looking to create. At the very least, I will credit him for deliberately avoiding any answers to the issue. But it almost stopped me from finishing the work. Only the fact that people on this site whose opinions I respect enjoyed the work so much allowed me to bash my way through.

The ending of the work was a marvel. Given the prominence given to steam engines at the end, I could not help but think of how our age of steam eventually ended with the age of nuclear power. The Galts and Utkhaiem might well find that they bottled one genie only to have unleashed something far worse.

Rating: 3.5 stars

A Shadow in Summer is the first in the Long Price Quartet by Daniel Abraham. I went into this book blind based entirely on my enjoyment of reading his Dagger and Coin series. Due to that experience I went in hoping for a character based fantasy with a rich world. To that end I was not disappointed.

The city-state of Sarayketh is unknowingly poised on the edge of disaster. It has grown quite wealthy by cornering the market on the cotton trade. This is due to the city's poet, Heshai, putting an idea into words and binding a spirit that can remove seeds from cotton with the wave of its hand. Commerce and trade is the way of life, with high and low born all doing business knowing that their city is a safe haven in a harsh world. Far to the west the merchants of Galt have other ideas. They have hatched a plan to strike at Saraykeht and take back the cotton trade. The head of Galt's trading house in the city is planning a crime so vile that if it succeeds, Sarayketh will fall.

This is definitely a book with great ideas. The concept of a poet-sorcerer giving shape and form to an idea and then binding it to a spirit, granting is human shape and speech, is pretty cool. That a city is able to capitalize on this is no surprise. Being able to magically remove seeds is a highly useful ability, one that has far greater applications than just with cotton. Abraham has also come up with a form of silent language where his characters take poses to enhance their verbal speech. This goes beyond mere body language and into the realm of art with how nuanced some character's poses can take. Unfortunately the poses are not well described so I had a hard time visualizing them in my head, constantly switching from full body martial arts style poses to something more like sign language. I mostly settled on a type of sign language primarily utilizing hands and arms as it would be easiest for all ages and levels of mobility.

The characters are solid. Abraham has quite a gift for writing elderly women! Amat was easily my favorite with Seedless as a close second. Heshai, Marchat Wilsin, Maati, Otah and Lait were good, but didn't capture my attention the way Amat and Seedless did. If this series follows a similar progression as his other works, most of the characters will have a complex character arc they go on over the next three books, which I'm very much looking forward to reading.

The story moves at a glacial pace as we wait for these characters lives to start twining together. This is a fairly short book at 330 pages and it still took me over a week to read due to the pacing. Also highly annoying was the obligatory love triangle and angst it caused. Oy. I'm hoping that now that the foundation has been laid the rest of the series will pick up the pace. I am invested enough by the end that I will definitely be continuing.

I must admit I expected to find this story tedious, as I often do multi-volume fantasy epics. But I was very pleasantly surprised. Daniel Abraham's world-building is top-tier, and his characters are complex and realistic. There are no moral absolutes here, thankfully...I've always despised broad strokes of black and white laid out to clue the reader in to "good" and "evil." (This is one of my biggest pet peeves with fantasy literature in general.) The reader is just as likely to feel genuine empathy for a "villain" in this story as to become disgusted by a beloved "hero", and for me this keeps the story believable.

The magic in A Shadow in Summer, such as it is, is unusual and language-based. (Thought-based, will-based, or imagination-based might be better ways to describe it. The wielders, rather than being called wizards, sorcerors, or witches, etc., are called poets, and it is an apt term.) There's no flash-bang tide-turning effects here, no battle magic, no incantations or hand-waving. The magic of the Andat is long-term, subtle, insidious, dangerous to the wielder, and vital to the prosperity of the people. It is also ethically questionable in the extreme, as it involves enslaving a being to one's will...or rather creating a being of one's will and then enslaving that part of oneself. It's complicated and darkly beautiful.

The people's language (of communication, not of magic) is both subtle and complex, full of ritualized gesture and nuanced body language. The characters - young men, old men, young women, old women, laborers, thugs, scholars, merchants, kings, demigods - were varied and colorful, and I enjoyed getting to know even those I did not actually like. The city of Saraykeht fairly breathed, steeped in the sensuality of food and scent and sound, as well as alive with the hum of local industry. I found there was just enough detail to make me believe and drift into imagination, but not so much as to see me skimming past descriptive passages or becoming bored.

The plot was well-paced and twisty, with some surprises I genuinely did not see coming. I love when an author actually puts one past me, as I am as jaded a reader as you will be likely to encounter. Ethical dilemmas, intrigue, tension, realistic and unsappy love, grinding guilt, wrenching sadness, betrayal, tenderness, lies, respect...Abraham writes all these well and affectingly and stays largely free of cliché in the process.

Even though this is the first of a 4-part series, the author wraps up the story neatly by the end of this first installment, so it works nicely as a stand-alone work. I have stated many times that I am not really a series reader, and that statement still holds, but I am already missing the vaguely Asian-meets-Arabesque atmosphere of the cities of the Khaiem, with something of the feeling of melancholy that permeates the story itself. I will most likely be drawn to read the second entry in the Long Price Quartet soon.

A review on my channel: https://youtu.be/FqhF8e_PtUY

4.5. Fantastic character work and world-building. Full review to come soon.

Rereading, I still love this book. Actually, I think I love it more. However, one thing did start to bother me. I love Amat. She's an archetype you so rarely see in fantasy novels: an older woman, no magical skills or combat abilities, just tenacity and mad talent at accountancy. I love that she tries to save her city, and I love that she fails and grits her teeth and keeps going, trying to salvage some industry from the wreckage of their economy. I kind of love her romance plot line with Wilsin, too, that she's allowed to be an object of desire despite being old and infirm--and that she chooses to prioritize her own career and her own city over romance anyway.

I do not love that her plotline takes place in a brothel. Because, seriously, fantasy genre: what is with your obsession with prostitution? She could have hidden out in a weaving sweatshop, and the book's plot would be exactly the same, except with 100% less background rape. (Because these are not happy hookers with hearts of gold, they're children and the destitute, people bound and indentured to their master, people who do not want this lifestyle and/or are not old enough to consent to it in any meaningful sense, and the book makes this very clear.) And I mean, yes, rape happens. It's part of the world. I am female. I cannot avoid knowing this. But when it adds nothing to the story, when it's treated as no more than local color--I am tired of reading about it.

If you want a truckload of fantastical action and magic, epic quests, sword and sorceress, just skip this book. If you want well-written and rounded characters, intricate political conspiracy, a vibrant city setting with its inhabitants, do not skip this book.

The real rating would be 3.5 as I enjoyed reading it. I can see why this is Daniel's first published (novel) work as his subsequent series are better developed and you could actually see/read how he progressed. He is one of my favorite authors now, with his equally excellent skill in writing both science fiction and fantasy. He is a fantastic character builder. No wonder George really liked the guy, not just because he was his former student at Clarion but also writing buddies. I cannot wait to read Hunter's Run this year!

DNF @ 20%. I think I gave this book a fair shot, 20% is quite a long way to read and still be completely bored by the characters, world and plot.

One thing that was really baffling and continually took me out of the book was the way the characters kept posing during conversations. It was soooo ridiculous, there wasn't a single dialogue that didn't involve at least ten different poses. They started as "a pose of greeting" or a "pose of farewell", which I can deal with, but soon the characters were doing "a pose of gratitude to one's teacher", "a pose of gentle mockery", "a pose of acknowledgement that held the nuance of a confession of failure", "a pose of acknowledgement appropriate for a student to a teacher", "a pose that was a request for clarification and a mourning both"... I mean, come on!! And none of these poses were explained, so I basically just pictured the characters going like this all the time:

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