Subject: SUMMER KING, WINTER FOOL by Lisa Goldstein

From: [email-masked] (Evelyn C Leeper)
Date: Wed, 8 Feb 1995 22:51:43 GMT

SUMMER KING, WINTER FOOL by Lisa Goldstein
          Tor, ISBN 0-312-85632-6, May 1994, 287pp, US$20.95
                   A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper
		    Copyright 1995 Evelyn C. Leeper

     Unlike some of Goldstein's other fantasies, SUMMER KING, WINTER
FOOL takes place in a never-never fantasyland rather than an
unspecified country in our world.  In the land ruled by the city
Etrara, the people worship the gods Callabrion and Scathiel.  In
summer, Callabrion rules from heaven and Scathiel is here (or rather
there) on earth, while in winter their positions are reversed.  Etrara
is your typical pre-industrial feudal kingdom, ruled by the not very
good King Gobro.  But at the start of the story, palace intrigues lead
to social and political upheaval, while Callabrion has apparently
decided to remain below and not ascend to heaven.

     I got into the mood from the very beginning of this book--we had
had a power failure and I read part by candlelight.  Even read by
ordinary electric light, there is a fantasy aura throughout this book.
Maybe it's that Goldstein gives the power in the book not just to
mages, but to poet-mages, who weave their spells through the poems they
compose.  The pen, or at least the word, is indeed mightier than the
sword in these battles.  It's a pity therefore that Goldstein resorts
to a deus ex machina resolution to resolve it all, though she does
avoid the obvious pat ending.

     In general I am not a fan of this sort of fantasy, preferring
fantasy set in our own world, but Goldstein has a certain modern
sensibility that makes this more enjoyable (to me) than most others of
this sort.  It reminds me of such works as Ellen Kushner's SWORDSPOINT,
and is part of a new, more modern branch on the fantasy tree.

%A      Goldstein, Lisa 
%T      Summer King, Winter Fool
%I      Tor
%C      New York
%D      May 1994
%G      ISBN 0-312-85632-6
%P      287pp
%O      hardback, US$20.95

-- 
Evelyn C. Leeper | +1 908 957 2070 | [email-masked]
"As I stood before the gates I realized that I never want to be as 
 certain about anything as were the people who built this place."
            -Rabbi Sheila Peltz Weinberg on her visit to Auschwitz