5 Stars
A Shadow in Summer is an excellent debut novel by Daniel Abraham, and a promising opening to the "Long Price Quartet" of which it is the first volume. Abraham, an experienced writer of short fiction, creates a universe that manages to be both exotic and mundane, and features a cast of captivating characters, often conflicted and drawn in shades of grey. The scenery and settings are beautifully evoked through light and elegant descriptions that reveal only as much as they need to in order to spark the imagination.
The story revolves around a plot to liberate the "andat" Seedless, a god-like figure chained in corporeal form by the "poet" Heshai, and forced to serve and protect the city of Saraykeht. With Seedless out of the way, Saraykeht would lose its competitive advantages in textiles and trade, and be vulnerable to military assault. The central characters are Maati, Heshai's apprentice and one of the very few selected to become poets, and Maati's former mentor Otah, now a renegade who rebelled against the cruel processes used to weed out potential poets. They are connected to the aging trade advisor Amat through her apprentice, and their mutual lover, Liat. Caught up in the whirl of events, Amat and the others attempt to defend Saraykeht and maintain its andat's captivity, while being driven in other directions by forces outside their control.
Unlike volumes in many recent fantasy series, A Shadow in Summer manages to resolve this plotline, and can be read as a stand-alone novel, not merely one portion of a larger work. Even better, it is not the sort of doorstopper work that has also become common in the genre, clocking in at 350 pages in a small, mass-market paperback edition.
Granted, A Shadow in Summer is not perfect -- it was a bit slow to get started, not really grabbing me until about a third of the way in, and many reviewers have commented on a troubling plot hole. However, despite its few flaws, I enjoyed it thoroughly, and look forward to getting my hands on Abraham's next work.
(19 January 2008)
