Book Log #40: A Shadow in Summer, by Daniel Abraham

[annathepiper]

aerialscribe gets kudos for recommending A Shadow in Summer to me, the first book of Daniel Abraham's Long Price Quartet. I very much enjoyed this and am definitely looking forward to reading more of the series.

The worldbuilding is excellent, a refreshing switch from a lot of fantasy I've read, on the grounds that the culture depicted on camera is one clearly influenced by Asian real-life cultures, not European ones. Characters address each other with honorific suffixes. With a a couple of specific exceptions, they're clearly not white--which is easy to miss until you get to the bit where the young female character Liat is described as having skin like "dark honey", and the two outlander characters are called out as unusual because of their hair and skin color. The food and architecture and clothing choices are all described with Asian influences clearly in mind. And most importantly, one of the most revered ranks in the entire culture is that of "poet", an interesting title for one whose function is to control certain abstract concept/thoughts embodied into physical form for the purpose of magically managing the society. That in particular struck me as very, very Eastern.

Abraham's writing is also excellent. He has a vivid way with a word that lushly portrays his world without drowning you in detail. The pacing is rock-solid, the characters intriguing, and events proceed along with a mounting sense of doom that leads me to really wonder how he's going to bump up the bar as the series proceeds. For this installment, four stars.