Publication Date: September 16th, 2025
Hardcover. 144 pages.
Celia discovered her talent for magic on the day her beloved oldest brother Argent left home. Furious at him for abandoning her in a war-torn land, she lashed out, not realizing her childish, angry words would suddenly become imbued with the power of prophecy, dooming him to a life without love.
While Argent wanders the world, forced to seek only fame and glory instead of the love and belonging he truly desires, Celia attempts to undo the curse she placed on him. Yet even as she grows from a girl to a woman, she cannot find the solution—until she learns the truth about the centuries-old war between her own people and the summerlings, the immortal beings who hold a relentless grudge against their mortal neighbors.
Now, with the aid of her unwanted middle brother, Celia may be able to both undo her eldest brother's curse and heal the lands so long torn apart by the Summer War."
I found The Summer War to be a compelling, compact, and beautifully told tale that was vibrant and engrossing. Novellas are often hit or miss for me because I find that authors seem to either excel at telling something truly complete in a shorter form, or they struggle to fit enough development of world, plot, and characters into a smaller amount of words. Fortunately, The Summer War is a successful novella that showcases many of the strengths of Novik's writing skills and reminds me how much I enjoy her work and recommend it to those who also enjoy thoughtful magical stories.
What I liked: The sibling relationships were easily the stand out parts of the character relationships, and I really liked exploring this dynamic throughout this story. There are a lot of tensions, loyalties, and both spoken and unspoken emotions between our protagonist and her brother, Argent, that was captivating to discover. This novella felt very much Naomi Novik-flavored in style with her perfect blend of myth and folktale elements, magic, emotional and thoughtful aspects, and compelling characters. The worldbuilding was also intriguing and I found myself really enjoying learning about some of the different lore and details of those involved in the story. Despite the fact that I would love to see a longer form of this story, I think it works excellently at novella length and I thought it was plotted and paced really well overall.
What I didn't like: I don't have many complaints about this story! The biggest one that I can think of is that there was a rather surprisingly large info dump near the start of the novella that really slowed down my immersion into the story. It just felt a bit overloaded near the exposition and felt a bit abrupt when the story had already started off so smoothly for me. That being said, I still very much enjoyed this story, and this was an easy hurdle to get past. I also wanted maybe a little bit more development with some of the characters, but given that this is a novella, I also understand where there simply isn't time for more exploration of deeper dives.
No comments:
Post a Comment