Jan 08 2009
The Summer Tree - light in my veins
That’s how I felt the first time I read The Summer Tree, today’s “Earthquake Book:” like I had light flowing in my veins. I felt bright, weightless, dancing on tiptoe, like the air was full of electricity. Like I couldn’t breathe, for joy.
October of 1985. Walking through the University of Calgary Bookstore, I glanced aside at a shelf — and stopped dead in my tracks. I saw the cover of a book (the cover above), and it so enchanted me that I had to, had to, pick up the book and buy it immediately. Not even caring what it was actually about. Talk about a publisher’s dream, eh?
And the thing was that somehow the artwork on the front cover (by Toronto painter/singer/writer Martin Springett) really fit the story inside. I don’t know how else to say it but that the spirit or essence of the story was perfectly captured in Springett’s cover.
And oh, that story! Five students from our world (from Toronto, actually - I can walk where they walked at the university here) taken by magic to another world - the First World of all worlds, as Guy Kay would have it - and while there, enduring great trials and tragedies and accomplishing literally mythic things –
That’s what gripped me, of course. Readers of this blog will already know I am passionate and crazy-mad for mythology. It was clear that my favourite character in this book (Paul) was dramatically living an actual myth, and to see how that would play out with a real live person in a physical, worldly context just threw me into utter enchantment. It was beautiful, it was sad, it was, quite literally, cosmic.
Nothing had enchanted me like this since Tolkien’s Silmarillion (which, incidentally, Guy Kay helped Christopher Tolkien compile), though even that book hadn’t been quite so intense for me.
This was my first encounter, ever, with Celtic mythology. All I knew before this had been the Greek and Roman pantheons, and a bit of Hindu myth that I didn’t like at the time. (My passion for that would come later.) These mythical figures were unlike anything I’d ever read before. So when Guy came to town on the promo tour for the second book, The Wandering Fire, I went to the book-signing and asked whether he’d made up this pantheon, or whether it was written about somewhere. And he gave me the names of some books to read, and started me on a long, long journey that I still haven’t finished, 23 years later.
There were all sorts of adventures afterward, as the second book came out, and then the final book (The Darkest Road); as Guy Kay and Martin Springett came to our local science fiction & fantasy convention; as Martin sent me posters of the three book covers to sell at conventions; as I drove through Toronto on my way to Syracuse University and met Guy again; and as I delivered the remaining posters back to Martin. (To his home — where the three large original paintings hung in his hall, and I got to gape at them, on the verge of tears.)
There was a reason the two men tended to be invited as a duo to SF&F conventions: Martin’s paintings continued to capture the utter essence both of the story Guy was telling and of the mythical pantheon itself. That had been what had stopped me in my tracks, that day at the university bookstore. Somehow I saw the spirit of Celtic myth radiating off that first cover, and it sang to my soul without my even knowing what the story was, or even what the myths were. It was that powerful.
I’ve read the trilogy many times since 1985. And unlike any other books in my life, I’ve gotten that “light in the veins” feeling over and over, almost every time I’ve read it.
More than in Guy’s later books, it seemed to me that every character in this trilogy was unique and magical and vivid and alive. I loved them all. But when Guy told me who had been the inspiration for one of the brightest characters - Prince Diarmuid of Brennin - that information sent me careening into another mind-shattering Earthquake Book. But you’ll have to wait for the next post for that one!
Oh, this is one of my faves as well. One of the most interesting twists on the Arthurian/Odin myth ever.
It’s certainly the only mashup of the two that I know of.
Hee! Well, thanks for posting. Both times.
I agree about the interesting twist on those myths. I remember how shocked I was when the Arthurian story started coming into it; it just didn’t seem to fit, at the time.
But that was before I started reading Celtic myth and discovered that the later French and Christian overlay was what I was familiar with, yet the real original myth had been very Celtic. I finally “got it” then. I certainly feel like this trilogy was the most creative solution to the triangle that I’ve ever seen.
As to the Odinic myth — yes, wasn’t that fascinating? That was almost more an Indo-European myth, since there are similar scenarios with trees in other myth systems too. Yet this one had a lot of the elements the Odinic myth. (Thought. Memory.)
What moved me most, in the entire trilogy, was Kevin’s story and what myth he lived. I can barely read the second book, because of that. But Paul’s deeds, especially in The Summer Tree, deeply moved me too.