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Summer in Orcus
When the witch Baba Yaga walks her house into the backyard, eleven-year-old Summer enters into a bargain for her heart’s desire. Her search will take her to the strange, surreal world of Orcus, where birds talk, women change their shape, and frogs sometimes grow on trees. But underneath the whimsy of Orcus lies a persistent darkness, and Summer finds herself hunted by the monstrous Houndbreaker, who serves the distant, mysterious Queen-in-Chains…
Summer in Orcus is a free serial released twice weekly, by the award-winning author T. Kingfisher.
Summer in Orcus is a free serial released twice weekly, by the award-winning author T. Kingfisher.
386 pages, ebook
First published January 25, 2017
About the author
T. Kingfisher
49 books16.6k followersT. Kingfisher is the vaguely absurd pen-name of Ursula Vernon. In another life, she writes children's books and weird comics, and has won the Hugo, Sequoyah, and Ursa Major awards, as well as a half-dozen Junior Library Guild selections.
This is the name she uses when writing things for grown-ups.
When she is not writing, she is probably out in the garden, trying to make eye contact with butterflies.
This is the name she uses when writing things for grown-ups.
When she is not writing, she is probably out in the garden, trying to make eye contact with butterflies.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 348 reviews
June 27, 2018
All the stars!! One reviewer described this award-nominated novel as "Narnia with teeth," and that's a great summary. I had so much fun reading this portal fantasy! Review first posted on Fantasy Literature:
Summer is a young girl whose overly protective, clingy mother tries to protect her from every possible danger, although Summer is allowed to read books about magic and shapechanging and such. (“Summer’s mother believed that books were safe things that kept you inside, which only shows how little she knew about it, because books are one of the least safe things in the world.”) But Summer’s mother is no match for Baba Yaga! One spring day Summer is found by Baba Yaga ― actually, she’s found by Baba Yaga’s chicken-footed house, which manages to convinces Baba Yaga that Summer is the girl they want for some unstated purpose.
When Baba Yaga offers Summer her heart’s desire, Summer really isn’t sure what to answer, though shapeshifting or being able to talk to animals do come to her mind. Instead, though, Baba Yaga looks deep into Summer’s heart and mind, then hands over a talking weasel to Summer and shoos her out of the house. And suddenly Summer finds herself in a strange, magical world, not at all certain where she’s going or what she’s supposed to do there.
Initially she’s in a long hallway with purple stained glass windows featuring a mischievous-looking saint, whose book proffers some cryptic advice like “Don’t worry about things you cannot fix” and “Antelope women are not to be trusted.” A door then leads Summer to a forest in the magical land of Orcus, where she meets a trio of shapeshifting women and is charmed by dryad-inhabited trees whose leaves turn into mice or frogs as they drop to the ground. But: “There is a cancer at the heart of the world” the woman in the bear skin tells Summer, and Summer can see that the Frog Tree is dying. Entrusted with a tadpole acorn by the tree’s dryad, Summer takes on a quest to save the Frog Tree, and perhaps more. She finds help from several inhabitants of Orcus, particularly a shapeshifting wolf (at night he turns into, not a human, but a pleasant cottage) and a hoopoe bird with Regency manners and a helpful flock of small valet-birds in bowler hats.
But she also finds that she’s being pursued by the fearsome Zultan Houndbreaker and his aptly named servant Grub, who hunt her in the name of the Queen-in-Chains.
I am completely in love with Summer in Orcus, a charming portal fantasy by T. Kingfisher (a pen-name of Ursula Vernon). Summer in Orcus manages to be absolutely delightful, with vividly imagined details and a delicious sense of humor, while at the same time subverting several stock fantasy tropes. It references Narnia with clear affection, while remaining clear-eyed about the dangers and difficulties of being a child who’s actually in a fantasy portal world.
Summer in Orcus has been nominated for the 2018 World Science Fiction Society (WSFS) award for best Young Adult book. Kingfisher originally posted this novel online in weekly installments, which you can read online here on her website. It’s also available in print and as a very reasonably priced ebook, which have appealing pencil illustrations by Lauren Henderson (I especially loved the tadpole acorn) that help to bring the story to life.
Initial post: Amazing story!! I LOVED this charming portal fantasy, which manages to be completely delightful and subvert several tropes at the same time. Highly recommended! It’s by T. Kingfisher, aka Ursula Verson, the author of the wonderful award-winning stories Jackalope Wives and The Tomato Thief, which are both free online and which you should read IMMEDIATELY if you haven’t already done so.
Many thanks to the author for providing me with a free copy of this book for review!
Summer is a young girl whose overly protective, clingy mother tries to protect her from every possible danger, although Summer is allowed to read books about magic and shapechanging and such. (“Summer’s mother believed that books were safe things that kept you inside, which only shows how little she knew about it, because books are one of the least safe things in the world.”) But Summer’s mother is no match for Baba Yaga! One spring day Summer is found by Baba Yaga ― actually, she’s found by Baba Yaga’s chicken-footed house, which manages to convinces Baba Yaga that Summer is the girl they want for some unstated purpose.
When Baba Yaga offers Summer her heart’s desire, Summer really isn’t sure what to answer, though shapeshifting or being able to talk to animals do come to her mind. Instead, though, Baba Yaga looks deep into Summer’s heart and mind, then hands over a talking weasel to Summer and shoos her out of the house. And suddenly Summer finds herself in a strange, magical world, not at all certain where she’s going or what she’s supposed to do there.
Initially she’s in a long hallway with purple stained glass windows featuring a mischievous-looking saint, whose book proffers some cryptic advice like “Don’t worry about things you cannot fix” and “Antelope women are not to be trusted.” A door then leads Summer to a forest in the magical land of Orcus, where she meets a trio of shapeshifting women and is charmed by dryad-inhabited trees whose leaves turn into mice or frogs as they drop to the ground. But: “There is a cancer at the heart of the world” the woman in the bear skin tells Summer, and Summer can see that the Frog Tree is dying. Entrusted with a tadpole acorn by the tree’s dryad, Summer takes on a quest to save the Frog Tree, and perhaps more. She finds help from several inhabitants of Orcus, particularly a shapeshifting wolf (at night he turns into, not a human, but a pleasant cottage) and a hoopoe bird with Regency manners and a helpful flock of small valet-birds in bowler hats.
But she also finds that she’s being pursued by the fearsome Zultan Houndbreaker and his aptly named servant Grub, who hunt her in the name of the Queen-in-Chains.
I am completely in love with Summer in Orcus, a charming portal fantasy by T. Kingfisher (a pen-name of Ursula Vernon). Summer in Orcus manages to be absolutely delightful, with vividly imagined details and a delicious sense of humor, while at the same time subverting several stock fantasy tropes. It references Narnia with clear affection, while remaining clear-eyed about the dangers and difficulties of being a child who’s actually in a fantasy portal world.
She thought, down in her very private heart of hearts, that she wanted to go home.Summer in Orcus will be enjoyable for both younger and older readers. It’s written on a middle grade/young adult level, but its sly humor and frequent references to classic fantasy novels and fairy tales will keep adult readers engaged. While the life lessons learned aren’t particularly subtle, they have elegance and mesh well with the plot of the book. Very highly recommended!
She felt immediately guilty for thinking it. In books, nobody who found themselves in a fantasy world ever wanted to go home. (Well, nobody but Eustace Clarence Stubb in Narnia, and you weren’t supposed to agree with him.)
She was definitely not feeling grateful enough for being on a superb magical adventure. She told herself this sternly several times and then wanted to cry, because it doesn’t help to yell at people who are cold and wet, even when the person yelling at you is you.
Summer in Orcus has been nominated for the 2018 World Science Fiction Society (WSFS) award for best Young Adult book. Kingfisher originally posted this novel online in weekly installments, which you can read online here on her website. It’s also available in print and as a very reasonably priced ebook, which have appealing pencil illustrations by Lauren Henderson (I especially loved the tadpole acorn) that help to bring the story to life.
Initial post: Amazing story!! I LOVED this charming portal fantasy, which manages to be completely delightful and subvert several tropes at the same time. Highly recommended! It’s by T. Kingfisher, aka Ursula Verson, the author of the wonderful award-winning stories Jackalope Wives and The Tomato Thief, which are both free online and which you should read IMMEDIATELY if you haven’t already done so.
Many thanks to the author for providing me with a free copy of this book for review!
April 1, 2018
Continuing my T. Kingfisher binge-read this week. Both a portal fantasy and a commentary on same. Summer, an eleven-year-old girl, escapes her overprotective and somewhat mentally ill mother through the ambiguous help of Baba Yaga, to a peculiar quest in a fantasy world that allows her to both discover and learn her strengths. (I just typo'd that, "earn her strengths". That, too.)
Somewhere, I made the observation that the ur-theme of books for the young, or at least for adolescents, is empowerment, but the ur-theme for grownups is redemption. This book manages to be a curious compound of both, which I am going to have to think about for a bit.
Also, if you didn't get enough Freddy in Georgette Heyer's Cotillion (and one can never have enough Freddy), Reginald the helpful hoopoe is the perfect Freddy. (Or the other way around, of course.) Also, dictionary.com will tell you how to pronounce "hoopoe".
Ta, L.
April 16, 2024
Fantastic
Oh my goodness. This was freaking fantastic. What a great young adult fantasy novel. I could read this again and again and again.
T. Kingfisher's "Summer in Orcus" follows a young girl named Summer who somehow is transported to a different world/land called Orcus.
Summer who has a mother who is scared of everything and is constantly worried over her will not allow her to do anything. Summer feels lonely and at times finds herself frustrated with her mother. When Summer sees a house moving about the neighborhood (go with it) she comes across Baba Yaga who agrees to grant her, her heart's desire. From there we are plunged into Orcus with Summer as she comes across three sisters who are not as they appear, a wolf, talking birds, and a talking weasel.
I adored Summer, Glorious, Reginald, and just about everyone in this story. Even the bad guys. Well, not Summer's mother. She was a lot. And exhausting. And yep, I would have been pro weird fairy tale land where I may be eaten over her and the stress of dealing with her day in and day out.
I loved the entire fantasy set-up of Orcus. It feels like our world, but is most definitely not (the talking birds wearing clothes and wigs is a big clue.
The flow of the story moves very well too.
The ending was great and I hope we get a sequel one day.
Oh my goodness. This was freaking fantastic. What a great young adult fantasy novel. I could read this again and again and again.
T. Kingfisher's "Summer in Orcus" follows a young girl named Summer who somehow is transported to a different world/land called Orcus.
Summer who has a mother who is scared of everything and is constantly worried over her will not allow her to do anything. Summer feels lonely and at times finds herself frustrated with her mother. When Summer sees a house moving about the neighborhood (go with it) she comes across Baba Yaga who agrees to grant her, her heart's desire. From there we are plunged into Orcus with Summer as she comes across three sisters who are not as they appear, a wolf, talking birds, and a talking weasel.
I adored Summer, Glorious, Reginald, and just about everyone in this story. Even the bad guys. Well, not Summer's mother. She was a lot. And exhausting. And yep, I would have been pro weird fairy tale land where I may be eaten over her and the stress of dealing with her day in and day out.
I loved the entire fantasy set-up of Orcus. It feels like our world, but is most definitely not (the talking birds wearing clothes and wigs is a big clue.
The flow of the story moves very well too.
The ending was great and I hope we get a sequel one day.
January 23, 2021
4.5 stars. T. Kingfisher has a knack for seeing right to the heart of things, whatever genre and subject she is writing in. Reading her books feels like brushing up against a knowledgeable, compassionate, and intensely curious mind that knows about insect metamorphosis as well as riparian plants, sourdough as well as the philosophical mindset of dogs, codependency as well as fairy tales. I've liked many of her books, but Summer in Orcus is the first one I've loved.
On the face of it, it's a middle grade portal fantasy. 11-year-old Summer, the only child of a clingy and overprotective single mother, is granted her heart's desire by Baba Yaga. But what is it? Baba Yaga's not telling. She's given a weasel (not enchanted, but he made the mistake of trying to eat the egg the chicken-legged house laid) and finds herself in a long hallway that leads out into a different world. There are rules, of course: 1) Don't worry about things that you cannot fix; 2) Antelope women are not to be trusted; 3) You cannot change essential nature with magic.
Orcus is a magical world, but it's also dying:
As expected, there are companions and a quest and seemingly useless objects that become useful. The details are quirky: Summer's companions come to include a hoopoe bird who acts like a Regency fop named Reginald and a werewolf called Glorious who turns into a cottage at night, making him a target of house-hunters. Summer's only weapon is a giant cheese knife given to her by the incognito Waymaster who has rebranded himself as the Wheymaster. Kingfisher writes good monsters, too, and her spider-horse hybrids are deliciously icky, and (mild spoiler) they are not even the thing that made me grimace in horrified pleasure.
But what sets Summer in Orcus apart from similar portal fantasies are its awareness of the tropes - sometimes bureaucracy and not bravery is what saves the day - and its refusal to take the easy way out. Summer comes across as a genuine 11-year-old, partly longing for freedom and adventure, and partly wishing some adult would make a real plan and tell her what to do. Kingfisher touches lightly but deftly on some serious issues, including Summer's borderline unhealthy relationship with her mother that has shaped a lot of her young life. Other characters are fascinatingly morally ambiguous. The antelope women are indeed not to be trusted, but they tell good stories: "Well, mythology is a truth that isn't true, and that's as delightfully twisty as a lie in its own way."
Things end satisfactorily but not tidily; I finished with a sigh of things-feel-just-right. Less preachy than Seanan McGuire, with less flash and more heart than Catherynne Valente, and altogether toothier than Narnia, Summer in Orcus is as snappy and crisp as a fresh autumn apple, even to my jaded palate.
Also, the biology in-jokes are nerdily awesome. I'll leave you with this one:
On the face of it, it's a middle grade portal fantasy. 11-year-old Summer, the only child of a clingy and overprotective single mother, is granted her heart's desire by Baba Yaga. But what is it? Baba Yaga's not telling. She's given a weasel (not enchanted, but he made the mistake of trying to eat the egg the chicken-legged house laid) and finds herself in a long hallway that leads out into a different world. There are rules, of course: 1) Don't worry about things that you cannot fix; 2) Antelope women are not to be trusted; 3) You cannot change essential nature with magic.
Orcus is a magical world, but it's also dying:
The tree rustled its branches, harder, and more leaves showered down. She heard the trunk groan, the way trees groan and mutter in a storm.
These leaves hopped. Some of them had changed, but there was something wrong with the frogs. They had no legs or too many legs or they plowed forward on their bellies. In a very few seconds they were all leaves again, and Summer was glad, because there was something horrible and piteous about the frogs. They had looked as if they were dying.
The white tree thrashed. Its limbs swayed in a gale that only it could feel. Behind them, the other two white trees moaned and swayed in sympathy.
Every leaf on the tree fell down, leaving the branches as bare as winter.
Many people have heard of a rain of frogs, but very few - far fewer than say they have - have ever seen one. Summer became one of those few. For a moment the air was full of tiny green frogs, transforming before they even hit the ground, all of them croaking like fingernails dragged over a comb.
As expected, there are companions and a quest and seemingly useless objects that become useful. The details are quirky: Summer's companions come to include a hoopoe bird who acts like a Regency fop named Reginald and a werewolf called Glorious who turns into a cottage at night, making him a target of house-hunters. Summer's only weapon is a giant cheese knife given to her by the incognito Waymaster who has rebranded himself as the Wheymaster. Kingfisher writes good monsters, too, and her spider-horse hybrids are deliciously icky, and (mild spoiler) they are not even the thing that made me grimace in horrified pleasure.
But what sets Summer in Orcus apart from similar portal fantasies are its awareness of the tropes - sometimes bureaucracy and not bravery is what saves the day - and its refusal to take the easy way out. Summer comes across as a genuine 11-year-old, partly longing for freedom and adventure, and partly wishing some adult would make a real plan and tell her what to do. Kingfisher touches lightly but deftly on some serious issues, including Summer's borderline unhealthy relationship with her mother that has shaped a lot of her young life. Other characters are fascinatingly morally ambiguous. The antelope women are indeed not to be trusted, but they tell good stories: "Well, mythology is a truth that isn't true, and that's as delightfully twisty as a lie in its own way."
Things end satisfactorily but not tidily; I finished with a sigh of things-feel-just-right. Less preachy than Seanan McGuire, with less flash and more heart than Catherynne Valente, and altogether toothier than Narnia, Summer in Orcus is as snappy and crisp as a fresh autumn apple, even to my jaded palate.
Also, the biology in-jokes are nerdily awesome. I'll leave you with this one:
"Killdeer," said Reginald, spiraling down for a landing. "They can talk, after a fashion, but it's not worth listening to. All they ever say is, "Help, help, my wing is broken, don't eat me.'"
"Are their wings broken?" asked Summer.
"Not a bit of it. They just do it to get people away from their nests. You tell them a hundred times that you're not the slightest bit interested in their nests, that there's nothing more tedious than having to look after other people's children, but they never listen."
February 26, 2017
“It would be a good day for the world if I could not find a child who knew terrible adult things. But I will be a great deal older before that day comes, I think.”Not quite a beginning quote but it may be why so many rightly say this is a middle-school portal fantasy for adults, though it is equally an adult portal fantasy for those middle-schoolers comfortable in classic adult fantasy (I know you're out there, lurking on GR: I was once you).
T.Kingfisher (Ursula Vernon) is a rare author. She conceives utterly strange and sometimes wondrous and heartfully true things then conveys them in commonsense prose. That is no small feat: she writes very close-to-the-bone indeed and says more in occasional sparsity than does many a more florid writer.
One gets the sense of listening to a friend telling a very good tale around a fading campfire.
Summer is the protagonist of the tale who ends up in the land of Orcus, the land of word games made real and people of all types, mostly not human types. Whether laughably loony word games or deadly serious, everyday adult-type word games of potential treachery and destruction, there is much to delight the word-lover in this little book and even more to delight the lover of 'hanging-in-there,' and of 'doing the right thing even when the outcome isn't quite exactly what you thought it would be because dammit it's the Right Thing.'
"It is difficult to walk across an enchanted desert and then be thrust into someone else’s sense of humor.":)
Edited to add: you can read this for free on her website at:
Summer In Orcus
or buy for a modest sum on Kindle.
September 9, 2018
When Summer stumbles upon Baba Yaga's Chicken feet house and asks for her heart's desire, Baba Yaga says she must find it for herself. What Summer doesn't know is that she'll be going on an adventure she'll never forget. Will she be able to find her heart's desire and go home? Read on and find out for yourself.
This was a pretty good fantasy story that I read for free at this website: http://www.redwombatstudio.com/portfo... . If you enjoy stories like this, definitely check it out for yourself and I hope you enjoy it as it was action-packed and very whimsical.
This was a pretty good fantasy story that I read for free at this website: http://www.redwombatstudio.com/portfo... . If you enjoy stories like this, definitely check it out for yourself and I hope you enjoy it as it was action-packed and very whimsical.
September 22, 2016
This is for everyone who hasn't forgiven Aslan, or Glinda, but understands now what was really happening.
June 12, 2018
This book is the reason I was late to work one day. I couldn’t stop reading. While brushing my teeth, while combing my hair, when I should have been getting into my work clothes, when I should have been driving to work, I was sitting on the couch, reading this.
Do NOT start this if you don’t have the time to devote to it. You will find that work and bathing aren’t that important at all.
I love this author, her ability to write is a woven spell around the reader. 5, I am now buying everything she has written EVER, stars.
Do NOT start this if you don’t have the time to devote to it. You will find that work and bathing aren’t that important at all.
I love this author, her ability to write is a woven spell around the reader. 5, I am now buying everything she has written EVER, stars.
December 8, 2019
Were-house! Bwahah!
But don't let the humor lull you -- this isn't a fluffy book. Like Glorious, it has teeth.
Also rotting slime and bugs that grow inside people and other nasty stuff.
Read it anyway!
I don't know how other writers do it, but I'm constantly coming up with weird little tidbits that don't fit in what I'm currently working on. Images, vignettes, chunks of mini-story... Sometimes all I have is a single phrase...
These ideas pile up.
Thank you! It's relief to know other people do this.
But don't let the humor lull you -- this isn't a fluffy book. Like Glorious, it has teeth.
Also rotting slime and bugs that grow inside people and other nasty stuff.
Read it anyway!
I don't know how other writers do it, but I'm constantly coming up with weird little tidbits that don't fit in what I'm currently working on. Images, vignettes, chunks of mini-story... Sometimes all I have is a single phrase...
These ideas pile up.
Thank you! It's relief to know other people do this.
June 6, 2023
This review was originally posted on Books of My Heart
I'm working my way through T. Kingfishers entire catalog and picked up Sumer in Orcas when it was a kindle deal. I've enjoyed every story by her that I have read so far and Summer In Orcas is continuing that trend. A portal fantasy in the same vein as Narnia but with a little extra humor added in, Summer is sent to Orcas after Baba Yaga's house finds her trapped in her own back yard for an adventure to save a world (or at least one thing in it) and find her hearts desire.
Summer is trapped, well she didn't necessarily realize she was trapped, but she isn't allow to go anywhere besides school because the world is dangerous and it seems going to the park or a sleep over or riding a bike all hold the same danger to her mother as playing with fire and they are not the same danger. So Summer isn't allowed to do any of those things. One day, Summer was playing in her locked back yard when a house walking on chicken legs, Baba Yaga's house, happened by to change her life forever. Baba Yaga was feeling generous that day and decided not to eat Summer and instead sent her on a journey.
In the world of Orcus, Summer finds wonderous things. Trees that drop leaves that change into lizards, frogs and mice. A Wolf who transforms into a house. A dragon's soul trapped in the body of a woman and oh so much more. There is something wrong in the land of Orcus and if Summer is going to find a way to save a tree, which seems like a much more doable thing than saving a world, she might just be able to save the world for a time at least.
Talking animals and strange places will lead Summer on a grand adventure to figure out what her heart's desire really is. She will face bad people and learn hard lessons but she will have an adventure that will change her forever. Summer is so likeable in that I can relate to her. She is both excited and scared to be on this adventure but is putting one foot in front of another to go down the path she has been led to in hopes she can come through for a magical tree. She has thoughts of going home, as most heroes do on their journeys to become heroes, but still she is carrying on because not everyone is given the opportunity for a magical adventure.
I enjoyed so much of this book. I grew up on Narnia and I like that Summer of Orcus shares that same vibe by also adds T. Kingfisher's humorous flare to it. The conclusion to the story I found quite satisfying and I really did like how Baba Yaga was woven into the adventure. This is a great read for middlegrade and YA while also being fun for regular adults too. Another win in the T. Kingfisher column for me.
I'm working my way through T. Kingfishers entire catalog and picked up Sumer in Orcas when it was a kindle deal. I've enjoyed every story by her that I have read so far and Summer In Orcas is continuing that trend. A portal fantasy in the same vein as Narnia but with a little extra humor added in, Summer is sent to Orcas after Baba Yaga's house finds her trapped in her own back yard for an adventure to save a world (or at least one thing in it) and find her hearts desire.
“Saving a single wondrous thing is better than saving the world. For one thing, it’s more achievable. The world is never content to stay saved.”
Summer is trapped, well she didn't necessarily realize she was trapped, but she isn't allow to go anywhere besides school because the world is dangerous and it seems going to the park or a sleep over or riding a bike all hold the same danger to her mother as playing with fire and they are not the same danger. So Summer isn't allowed to do any of those things. One day, Summer was playing in her locked back yard when a house walking on chicken legs, Baba Yaga's house, happened by to change her life forever. Baba Yaga was feeling generous that day and decided not to eat Summer and instead sent her on a journey.
In the world of Orcus, Summer finds wonderous things. Trees that drop leaves that change into lizards, frogs and mice. A Wolf who transforms into a house. A dragon's soul trapped in the body of a woman and oh so much more. There is something wrong in the land of Orcus and if Summer is going to find a way to save a tree, which seems like a much more doable thing than saving a world, she might just be able to save the world for a time at least.
Talking animals and strange places will lead Summer on a grand adventure to figure out what her heart's desire really is. She will face bad people and learn hard lessons but she will have an adventure that will change her forever. Summer is so likeable in that I can relate to her. She is both excited and scared to be on this adventure but is putting one foot in front of another to go down the path she has been led to in hopes she can come through for a magical tree. She has thoughts of going home, as most heroes do on their journeys to become heroes, but still she is carrying on because not everyone is given the opportunity for a magical adventure.
She felt immediately guilty for thinking it. In books, nobody who found themselves in a fantasy world ever wanted to go home. (Well, nobody but Eustace Clarence Stubb in Narnia, and you weren’t supposed to agree with him.)
She was definitely not feeling grateful enough for being on a superb magical adventure. She told herself this sternly several times and then wanted to cry, because it doesn’t help to yell at people who are cold and wet, even when the person yelling at you is you.
I enjoyed so much of this book. I grew up on Narnia and I like that Summer of Orcus shares that same vibe by also adds T. Kingfisher's humorous flare to it. The conclusion to the story I found quite satisfying and I really did like how Baba Yaga was woven into the adventure. This is a great read for middlegrade and YA while also being fun for regular adults too. Another win in the T. Kingfisher column for me.
“Summer had read a great many books about magic and animals and changing your shape. Summer’s mother believed that books were safe things that kept you inside, which only shows how little she knew about it, because books are one of the least safe things in the world.”
August 19, 2024
Entertaining, but definitely YA, perhaps even pre-teen level (MC is not quite 12). It took me two tries to finish this one, and it's not my favorite of hers. OTOH, Kingfisher/Vernon is a great storyteller, and she can make even unpromising material work. The birds! The dragons! The weasel! Baba Yaga is just great. So you should read this if you’ve missed it. For me, this was a 3.5 star read, rounded up. Good stuff. I'm glad I came back to it.
April 20, 2018
3.5 stars. I enjoyed the ending the most - it's a portal fantasy, but upends some of the cliches. I do feel like this was a bit choppier in its elements than other Kingfisher/Vernon stories I've read, but still enjoyable.
July 18, 2017
So far my least favourite T. Kingfisher book. The reason why this book didn't work for me is just a big personal preference thing, so keep that in mind.
Summer in Orcus is a portal fantasy book that reads a lot younger than T. Kingfisher's other books. During the first half I was wondering why she didn't publish this as Ursula Vernon, T. Kingfisher being the name she uses for adult fiction. With time I did realize that the 11-year-old protagonist would probably have been more hopeful and action-ready in a children's book, whereas here she often feels tired, hopeless, cold, and scared.
My main beef with the book is that this fantasy world is, to put it in Seanan McGuire's Every Heart A Doorway terms, a High Nonsense world. And I don't get along that well with those (see Alice in Wonderland). There is a hodgepodge of random stuff like werehouses, frog trees, Regency birds, etc etc. So, let's say it's whimsical. Vernon herself says in the afterword that Orcus is a story where she could put all those random tidbits and ideas that had come to her mind but hadn't fit into any of her other stories. So the protagonist and her party spend their time going to a new place, experiencing a random quirky thing/place/character, and moving onwards to the next thing. That has never been my cup of tea, even if there is a bigger plot on the background.
This was first published as a web serial on Vernon's website, and I found that even with the ebook, I felt better reading it in parts, one or two chapters at a time. One new place/quirky occurence at a time.
It had Baba Yaga, though.
Summer in Orcus is a portal fantasy book that reads a lot younger than T. Kingfisher's other books. During the first half I was wondering why she didn't publish this as Ursula Vernon, T. Kingfisher being the name she uses for adult fiction. With time I did realize that the 11-year-old protagonist would probably have been more hopeful and action-ready in a children's book, whereas here she often feels tired, hopeless, cold, and scared.
My main beef with the book is that this fantasy world is, to put it in Seanan McGuire's Every Heart A Doorway terms, a High Nonsense world. And I don't get along that well with those (see Alice in Wonderland). There is a hodgepodge of random stuff like werehouses, frog trees, Regency birds, etc etc. So, let's say it's whimsical. Vernon herself says in the afterword that Orcus is a story where she could put all those random tidbits and ideas that had come to her mind but hadn't fit into any of her other stories. So the protagonist and her party spend their time going to a new place, experiencing a random quirky thing/place/character, and moving onwards to the next thing. That has never been my cup of tea, even if there is a bigger plot on the background.
This was first published as a web serial on Vernon's website, and I found that even with the ebook, I felt better reading it in parts, one or two chapters at a time. One new place/quirky occurence at a time.
It had Baba Yaga, though.
Read
August 30, 2017In which I continue my T Kingfisher binge. What a lovely story. Classic portal fantasy where a child goes to another world, with a number of the kind of twists in perspective at which Kingfisher excels, including the skills by which Summer saves the day. Absurd and fantastical and wildly imaginative. Author apparently wrote this as a prophylactic against the real-world awfulness of 2016, and it pretty much works.
August 8, 2018
I am not sure how I came to read Castle Hangnail a year or two ago, but I do know that I've been recommending it to everyone I know with children, and quite a few adults, ever since. It was just so thoroughly delightful, with wonderful turns of phrase and good-hearted messages at the core of the story of a young girl taking over an evil castle and installing herself as the new evil sorceress in town.
Note: The rest of this review has been withheld due to the changes in Goodreads policy and enforcement. You can read why I came to this decision here.
In the meantime, you can read the entire review at Smorgasbook
Note: The rest of this review has been withheld due to the changes in Goodreads policy and enforcement. You can read why I came to this decision here.
In the meantime, you can read the entire review at Smorgasbook
May 29, 2018
I hardly know how to explain why I adored this book so much. I enjoyed it right from the start, but by the end it had carved itself a permanent place in my heart. For starters, I love portal fantasies that really engage with the personal consequences of visiting a different world, and Summer in Orcus does that beautifully, exploring Summer’s changing self-perception and asking what will be different for her once she returns home. I love that Summer’s genre-savviness – born of a life where reading is her only escape from her mother’s extreme overprotectiveness – informs the way she deals with the situations she encounters, and I love that her strength and power comes from unexpected places. I loved the richness, strangeness and detail of Orcus and the characters Summer encountered there. I loved the emphasis on the importance of small quests – fixing something, even if you can’t fix everything. Plus it was funny and smart and heartwarming and sad and beautiful. Highly recommended.
April 18, 2024
2024 reread: Finally have a paper copy of this to read. Still as delightful and deep as I remember, though of course there are a lot of details I'd forgotten. It's a short book, so it should have been a quick read, but Life intervened and I ended up taking almost a week to finish. It also has a kind of meandering plot, so it doesn't actually blitz along as fast as you'd think for a book this short. I'm now removing my previous "middle reader" tag, because I don't think it's a middle reader book at all, even with the age of the protagonist. It's an adult book ABOUT a child, but that doesn't make it a children's book.
2022 review:
Like Narnia, but better and without the religious undertones.
This reminded me a lot of The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, and I would highly recommend it for fans of that book, and vice versa.
There were so many wonderful delightful tidbits in this book that it's hard to choose my favorite part. I definitely appreciated that the author knows that platypuses don't have nipples, but rather their milk just seeps out of their skin....so if the cheesemaker at the Whey Station wanted platypus milk to make cheese from, he'd have to wring the platypus like a towel. This is a real life fun/weird animal fact getting squidged into a whimsical story. I love it. Also, a were-house? Come on...
Took me a long time to read this book since (at the time) only the ebook version was available affordably, so I was reading it in bits and pieces on my phone. I think on paper this would be a fairly quick read, though the plot is pleasantly meandering. I've labeled it as "middle reader" since the main character is twelve, but it's definitely one of those that is really better for adults who grew up with Narnia and wish they had something similar to read now.
2022 review:
Like Narnia, but better and without the religious undertones.
This reminded me a lot of The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, and I would highly recommend it for fans of that book, and vice versa.
There were so many wonderful delightful tidbits in this book that it's hard to choose my favorite part. I definitely appreciated that the author knows that platypuses don't have nipples, but rather their milk just seeps out of their skin....so if the cheesemaker at the Whey Station wanted platypus milk to make cheese from, he'd have to wring the platypus like a towel. This is a real life fun/weird animal fact getting squidged into a whimsical story. I love it. Also, a were-house? Come on...
Took me a long time to read this book since (at the time) only the ebook version was available affordably, so I was reading it in bits and pieces on my phone. I think on paper this would be a fairly quick read, though the plot is pleasantly meandering. I've labeled it as "middle reader" since the main character is twelve, but it's definitely one of those that is really better for adults who grew up with Narnia and wish they had something similar to read now.
June 5, 2018
I was a little disappointed in this one. I was expecting an adult-oriented book, which is what this one seemed to be marketed as and was more in line with how I understood Ms. Kingfisher uses her pen names. And I can kind of see where the author is coming from, in terms of subjects that aren't appealing to the typical middle grader. However, in terms of depth and writing style and such, it's still very much a middle grade novel despite the scattering of adult viewpoints.
And while she does ignore many of the common portal fantasy tropes, it never really felt anything other than rather generic.
And while she does ignore many of the common portal fantasy tropes, it never really felt anything other than rather generic.
March 10, 2023
This is a charming (but not saccharine), adventure-quest, portal fantasy meant for younger teenagers. But it's fun to read if you are a grown up too. Eleven-year old Summer has a run in with Baba-Yaga who promises to give Summer her heart's desire... and gets sent through a portal to the land of Orcus - where something is quietly rotting in the shadows. Summer doesn't know what her heart's desire is, but she wants to help a dying tree. The world on the other side of the portal has a fascinating cast of characters and world building - everything from were-wolves that turn into cottages (and becomes the target of house-hunters), antelope women (who are not to be trusted), a brightly coloured hoopoe in a waistcoat (a fop), a city in a giant cactus, trees whose leaves turn to frogs, and terrifying horse-spiders (too many eyes, and too many legs!), and a friendly weasel. I love T. Kingfisher's imagination and her different perspective when looking at ordinary things. A fun little story.
June 25, 2023
One day Baba Yaga grants 12 year old Summer her hearts desire. Summer loves fantasy books and is understandably both thrilled and very worried to be sent into a magical land with a quest and no over-protective mother. Orcus is a very cool land, an odd mixture of charming (Reginald the foppish bird who's waited upon by a valet flock), corny (a wolf who's cursed to turn into a cottage at night, making him sort of a were-house ), and the deeply weird and disturbing. The start was a little slow for me, but Summer picks up tactics and allies in a natural way and by the end I was really enjoying her little band of adventurers.
November 12, 2022
Ich wollte weiterhin eskapistischen Eskapismus (obwohl ich sagen muss, dass die letzte Woche auch in der Realität ganz erholsam war mit dem Erfolg von Mastodon und den gar nicht so furchtbaren US-Wahlen), und ich habe ihn bekommen. Das Buch ist 2016 in den USA genau für solche Zwecke geschrieben worden, wie ich dem Nachwort entnehme. Es hat angenehm vielschichtige Figuren, es ist lustig, es enthält nicht zu viele ausschweifende Beschreibungen von alternativen Gesellschaftsformen in Baumhäusern, die Protagonistin ist sympathisch und sogar das Ende war gut und kein bisschen enttäuschend.
July 9, 2018
it probably, maybe wasn't perfect. but i loved every moment of reading the story, loved the people in it and most definitely loved summer and how she worked and thought and was ordinary in an extra ordinary way. would highly recommend to all my friends.
Read
August 14, 2024Ne sećam se kad mi je poslednji put neka knjiga (za decu ili ne) ovako fino legla.
September 15, 2019
I’m coming to the conclusion that when at all possible I should read episodically-written stories in the fashion intended rather than consuming them as if a continuous novel. I loved this portal fantasy of an over-protected girl granted her heart’s desire: to go on adventures. And what adventures! A quest with a mystery and an over-arching peril that turns out to be very different from what all the story tropes set you up to believe. But the reading felt a bit jerky, as each chapter resolves to a stopping point, sometimes in an artificial-feeling way. That’s my only complaint, though. The world building is superb and the supporting characters are well-realized in quirky and inimitably Kingfisher fashion. Like much of Kingfisher’s fiction, the setting conjures a complete mythos that borrows from existing mythology but has an integrated reality of its own. I’d call the book “YA-friendly” in the sense that the protagonist is young, it has coming-of-age themes, and the perils and experiences are ones that will feel both real and manageable for teenage readers, but it probably won’t feel “too young” for adult readers.
December 16, 2017
Great beginnings and decent end, just wish the middle had been reduced.
December 29, 2016
Due to the just-two-chapters-a-week release schedule of this book that I stumbled on just as Chapter One was posted (Arghhh! That it is NOT how I read! I do not eat my stories in dainty little bites! I gorge myself on books whole!) I had plenty of time to work on the review, and it quickly morphed into a recap with annotations. So bear with me, or skip, if you fear elongated spoilers.
This story is a homage to the subgenre of "portal fantasy" – a young person who travels through a magical portal from our world to a magical world.
Summer in Orcus starts off grounded solidly in reality as the main character, an eleven year old girl named Summer, struggles to deal with living with a mother who NEEDS HELP. Unfortunately, her mother is using the (sadly common) coping mechanism of treating her young daughter like a therapist, constantly unloading all of her problems on her, demanding a constant reassurance of love, and not letting her daughter take two steps without freaking out about danger everywhere.
Kingfisher's opening drags a bright highlighter over why being a kid can really suck, made worse by knowing stories like this play out every day, and Summer is an all too common modern character of a child struggling to grow up in a dysfunctional environment, seen in many modern fiction books today.
However, the story takes a sharp left turn into another genre entirely as Baba Yaga's chicken legged house strolls into Summer's backyard one evening.
Summer dares enter Baba Yaga's domain, and Baba Yaga, being in a good (and slightly capricious) mood, offers Summer her "heart's desire" (and a talking weasel, as a bonus). Summer isn't sure, exactly, what she wants the most, and Baba Yaga is a little too cheerful telling her that finding that out is part of the fun.
Baba Yaga then kicks her out and Summer is no longer in her backyard but some magical new place. Being a well-read child, she immediately gets it that she's in a Narnia-like situation, and just rolls with it, and the story rapidly becomes the kind of meta that results from a literate 21st century child tumbling into a fantasy book archetype.
The first people she meets is the classic trio of three older women with magic and advice, living on the fringe of civilization. These three have taken the names Donkeyskin, Boarskin and Bearskin after their respective magic cloaks. They lead Summer through their forest, filled with magic trees with leaves that change shape when they fall, becoming things like mice or lizards when they touch the ground.
But the Frog-Tree is dying, and it breaks Summer's heart to watch this particular tree unable to use its own magic properly. The trio tell Summer something is causing magical things to die, and then send her on her way, advising her to go to the “Waystation” which will help her figure out her next move.
She spends a night crossing a desert littered with “sand stars” - scorpions that glow in the dark (a scary / gorgeous piece of imagery) - and almost gets high on the dizzying mirrored sight of the star covered sky and star covered ground, a magnificent vista right out of something like Star Wars or Lord of the Rings.
On the other side Summer discovers the Wheystation and is not impressed with the cheese puns she encounters.
We meet the wheymaster, who could have stepped out of either the Land of Expectations or Diagon Alley, and we first hear about Zultan and the Queen-in-Chains. (Hah! What a title! Take that, Child-Like-Empress!)
Then Zultan and his henchman Grub and his minions show up, hunting for a human girl they hear has stumbled into Orcus, and she has to hide in a room-sized block of cheese while the wheymaster throws them off the trail. The wheymaster then gives Summer some advice on what direction to follow, using a type of prophetic cheese.
Kingfisher is clearly a major cheese lover, and while I’m rather sparing in my own cheese consumption, even I was impressed with her fantasy take on cheeses, including cheese made from the milk of nightmares, cheese aged in moonlight, cheese made with the honey of clockwork bees, and more. All these fantastic cheeses come in every imaginable (and some not so imaginable) shape, size, color, and texture.
It’s so imaginative that, despite rolling my eyes along with Summer when the scene started, I was sad when Summer had to move on from this cheese-version of Honeydukes.
Sent on her way with a cheese-sword (like a cheese knife, only bigger, you know, to deal with really big cheeses :-D) she walks through a world that is described as gorgeous as a trip to any national park, breathtaking even before the magical elements are added in.
But Zultan and his pack are hot on her heels. As she and the weasel run and hide, she grimly hangs on to the mantra that if the Pevensie kids could hack it, so can she.
Along the road Summer meets a hoopoe bird named Reginald – who delightfully talks just like Bertie Wooster – and he cheerfully offers to help her out, much to the weasel's disgust, sneering to Summer about the bird's foppish manners. But Summer is delighted by Reginald's friendliness and his flock of valet-birds that follow him around to make sure he dresses properly for dinner and such, and I was equally charmed by this avian Jeeves and Wooster.
The next day Summer realizes camping makes for a miserable morning, even in an enchanted land. Kingfisher, in a hilarious mini narrative rant, goes on about how there is absolutely nothing poetic about dew, it's just cold water that gets everywhere, and she has clearly been on a few primitive camping trips herself after reading too much Byron.
Summer, cold and damp, braves on, and stumbles on another pun in the form of a "were-house" –fearsome wolf by day, cozy cottage by night –currently trapped by house-hunters.
Kingfisher balances out her howlingly bad puns by having Summer groan each time she comes across one. But the "were-house" turns out to be more than just a pun. Kingfisher takes the idea of Baba Yaga's walking house and teases that idea out – what if it were one of a species? Wild houses, tame houses, herds of houses on migration; it's so stupid its brilliant, and what a wonderful adult fantasy that you could walk out one day and wrangle a house, rather than deal with mortgages and real estate agents. Yes please!
Summer agrees to free him because she had a moment of almost acting just like her mother, and the thought of her mother having already programmed her that deeply pushes her straight into acting brave, and the were-house joins the group.
Then Summer sees her pursuers up close, all riding “Sleipnirians”, which Kingfisher borrows from Celtic mythology and makes weirder with not just eight legs, but also eight eyes and an all over sickening distortion by the mind-bending blurring of horse and spider.
Reginald tries to throw them off while Summer hides. Watching Grub suspiciously question Reginald, Summer is willing to admit she is scared, but knows the right thing to do is turn herself in before her new friend gets killed on her behalf. Before she has to find out if she can follow through on this, there is a brief scuffle that leaves one of the valet-birds dead and the hunters ride on. Safe momentarily, but the stakes have been raised.
And then the stakes get raised again as they find more background characters have been killed by Zultan’s men. Summer is horrified that people died because of her, and the wolf has to firmly tell her that she didn’t do anything, nor should she take on other people’s guilt.
Summer wants to take action, and decides to somehow help the sick Frog-Tree. Reginald advises seeking out a forester he knows of, so the group head towards a nearby town on the way to the forester.
As they continue on, they all give Summer more details about Orcus, and it is a major relief to have a change in tone after a scene with a bunch of dead extras, and it’s fascinating world-building. As much as this follows the pattern of lands like Narnia, Oz and Fantastica, it is an original and creative version of a fantasy land, and we see more of that creativity as Summer enters Fen-town and we get all the delights of a fantasy market town, like Milo arriving in Dictionopolis.
There is also layer of bureaucratic red tape wrapped around the magical elements, as we learn the creatures of Orcus are just as burdened by special permits and proper licenses as we are in this world. In fact, Summer bluffs her way through Customs based on a recent trip with her mother to the DMV, much to her little gang’s delight.
Next Summer and her group meet the Forester, a woman who used to be a dragon, but her body was stolen from her by a girl who wished to be a dragon, resulting in a body switch, and now the Forester is stuck in the body of a human with the heart of a dragon. It’s even worse than it sounds.
She offers Summer guidance both in immediate and general terms; her own knowledge of what can be changed and what must be accepted was hard won, making her advice all the more valuable. She also knows that the Queen-in-Chains is sending out wasps that are causing magical things to die, so they have to find a wasp to follow back to the queen.
But first they stop at Reginald’s family home for advice and supplies from dear pater. And, oh my, his father's manor is the bird version of Totleigh Towers that I never knew I needed but am now completely in love with!
Reginald’s father gives Summer some more information about Zultan and more backstory, and Kingfisher just about breaks my heart with the tragedy of the dogs of Orcus.
There’s a detour from the action as Summer is invited to attend a ball, showing more of the morès of Orcus’s aviary culture. But the party is ruined by another attack from Zultan, almost managing to burn down the family manor, and Summer now has two badass geese guards, assigned by Reginald’s father to protect the little group.
They travel to the Great Pipes, a mountain-sized cactus, with the inside hollowed out to hold an entire city! Here Summer meets the Priestess of the Pipes, who reminds her strongly of her teacher – but the resemblance only goes so far, and Summer experiences her first true betrayal, and Kingfisher writes exquisitely of how mental pain can be astonishingly like physical pain as Summer tries to grasp how in the space of just a few moments everything goes horribly wrong.
And quickly goes from horribly wrong to horribly weird as Summer learns more than she wants about Zultan, the kind of villain who likes to have a civilized conversation with the hero over tea and explain earnestly that they are not truly wicked, and, indeed, there is no good or evil, only power, and all the usual excuses.
He is a quietly insane bookworm who immolates people because he “got in the habit.” Scary!
Then Summer meets another high ranking minion, an antelope-woman, who is cheerfully chaotic in a way that would make your average trickster god sit up and take notice.
She delights in telling Summer a creation myth about Orcus and why her own people are mistrusted, while also describing all the terrible things she might do to Summer, clearly enjoying the chance to mar a piece of Summer’s innocence the same way someone else would delight in carving their initials into a new jar of peanut butter.
Still, she offers escape, and Summer takes it, learning the awful fact that sometimes all possible choices in a given situation are bad. An escape follows that involves more trudging than chases, and Summer is reunited with her little group, who all immediately run off the antelope-woman with threats and curses and shower Summer in love and reassurance, leaving her felling guilty and confused, but also loved for once, instead of smothered.
And, even better, her group caught one of the magic-killing wasps, so they are off find the queen!
But the house-hunters again try to snatch the were-house, but Summer manages to fight back - not with fire and sword - but with the iciest grown-up words she can hurl at them, (words like ‘registered’, ‘permit’, ‘authorities’, etc.), and gets them to back off. It’s a lesson everyone could stand to learn young – act like you have the strongest legal position and you’ll probably get away with it.
But there’s no talking their way out of things as Zultan, Grub and the henchmen attack, and there is time only for the briefest of strategic assessments for where’s a good place to take a stand, and Kingfisher manages to capture the frantic confusion of a fight scene dead on while still making it possible to follow the action.
When Summer sees Grub down, she takes all her anger and fear and shoves it into him via the cheese sword, not ashamed to attack someone while he is down, because he is a homicidal maniac. That briefly makes things worse, as his inner demon is literally let loose, but she takes that on pretty well too, and soon only Zultan is left, morosely looking at the carnage as if it has nothing to do with him, and takes off.
They won the battle, but it cost them dearly, and they have to choose between following Zultan, continuing to seek out the Queen-in-Chains, or just giving up, and as much as Summer wants to give up, the urge to see it through, and to make sure the death of those who just died has meaning, is stronger and they soon find the Queen-in-Chains’ palace.
The queen lives in a cathedral-sized wasp nest, and I bet this is Kingfisher-the-gardener writing rather than Kingfisher-the-author. Oh sure, bees and their hives are all well and good, but a wasp nest can get ugly real fast.
And we meet the Queen-in-Chains.
She’s a dragon.
In fact, she’s the human who stole the dragon body from the Forester, and it has driven her nearly insane. Summer realizes the dragon needs someone to talk to, so she resumes the old role she played with her mother of making soothing noises and reassurances while coaxing the whole story from her. It’s a great deviation from the usual narrative to have the protagonist sit down and talk to the Big Bad Monster and ask what’s wrong rather than attacking.
It turns out she has no control over her dragon body, and she begged to be chained to stop mindlessly ravaging, but Zultan used her before chaining her, and she is terrified he will unleash her horrific destruction again.
In the end, all she needs is a reassurance that everything-is-going-to-be-OK, a line Summer is well rehearsed in saying.
But leaving the queen’s nest-castle Summer walks smack into Zultan, and they have an old fashioned villain/hero standoff, with Summer being reasonable and angry and Zultan being insane and hyper-civilized.
She survives, with the help of her friends, and, thankfully, Zultan does not, and they turn back to somberly retrace their steps homeward.
Back at the beginning, the Frog Tree dies, but Summer is able to plant a seed that springs immediately to life to a Frog-Sapling, and she finally feels ready to go home.
Baba Yaga congratulates her at the portal and Summer angrily demands that she be allowed to remember what happened in a scene that happily tips most fantasy ending troupes on their head. Summer returns home, not happy – but not sad either – to know someday she will have to leave her home permanently, despite her mother’s fears.
Summer is an up-to-date example of the typical portal-fantasy main character, markedly contrasted from her 19th and 20th century predecessors.
Summer doesn't stride with the confidence born of being part of the top portion of the mighty British Empire like Alice and Wendy, and she isn't eager to do something after being told to stay out of the way and let the grownups handle things, like the Pevensie kids. But neither is she bored with American post-WWII affluence, like Milo. And Summer has issues, but she's fully aware of them, and isn't avoiding them, like Bastian.
(Note: I am purposefully not including Dorothy because she did not choose to walk through her portal, but was instead forcibly dragged by that tornado.)
But what is most revealing about her character takes place early on, when Summer is told to choose a candle:
Summer chooses the frog, and is complimented on her choice. Unicorns versus frogs. Let's unpack that, shall we? >cracks knuckles<
A unicorn is a nonexistent creature, a wish for impossible things.
At best, a unicorn represents the human desire to try to go beyond what we think is possible – to push all boundaries and achieve greatness. The unicorn makes a wonderful mascot for the Boston Marathon, as humans each year attempt to break records of what the human body can do in terms of strength and speed, just by putting one foot in front of the other.
At worst, the unicorn represents things that simply cannot exist, and make us depressed by the fact we can’t have them. A unicorn is that Manic Pixie Dream Girl, a ridiculous standard of physically impossible waist measurements and mentally unhealthy mindsets. A “unicorn” is often also used in business terms to describe a perfect company. Many real life companies, especially in Silicon Valley, have been called "unicorns" - except most turn out to be just ordinary nags that cannot magically give every stockholder a billion dollars.
Meanwhile, a frog is a deceptively ordinary beast, full of disregarded potential.
Frogs are common props for female practitioners of the magical arts, from Shakespeare's three witches cooking up spells to J.K. Rowling's young Lily coming home from Hogwarts with teacups full of frogs, much to her sister's jealously. A frog tells Sleeping Beauty's mom she is with child, frogs are known to become princes in other fairy tales, and Queen Elizabeth I nicknamed one of her (many) suitors Monsieur Frog, as a playful suggestion that his love for her might be real – because a frog's love is considered to be noticeably more constant than a fickle unicorn's affection.
In nature, frogs can be a source of food, or used as a weapon, depending on the type, they are the go-to example in the schoolroom for how cycles of nature work, and their ability to lie dormant as eggs throughout droughts are practically miraculous. They are an ordinary, common miracle, and hence overlooked.
Frogs are a symbol of birth, transitions, sexuality and fertility. They show that someone can turn from one thing to become a completely new thing in a very real way.
Unicorns might die (or at least throw a hissy fit) if their mane gets mused, but frogs will dig into the mud and survive, willing to do what it takes to live and thrive, even if that means not looking pretty.
Summer chooses the frog because she would rather have real, solid change in her life than a false veneer of magical transformation that is all style and no substance. Summer desperately wants to be an adult with all the agency that comes with it rather than be a little girl playing tea time with her dolls who has little say in all decisions in her life from bedtime to living arrangements.
Summer doesn't want a holiday from real life. Quite simply, she wants to grow up.
This story is a homage to the subgenre of "portal fantasy" – a young person who travels through a magical portal from our world to a magical world.
Summer in Orcus starts off grounded solidly in reality as the main character, an eleven year old girl named Summer, struggles to deal with living with a mother who NEEDS HELP. Unfortunately, her mother is using the (sadly common) coping mechanism of treating her young daughter like a therapist, constantly unloading all of her problems on her, demanding a constant reassurance of love, and not letting her daughter take two steps without freaking out about danger everywhere.
Kingfisher's opening drags a bright highlighter over why being a kid can really suck, made worse by knowing stories like this play out every day, and Summer is an all too common modern character of a child struggling to grow up in a dysfunctional environment, seen in many modern fiction books today.
However, the story takes a sharp left turn into another genre entirely as Baba Yaga's chicken legged house strolls into Summer's backyard one evening.
Summer dares enter Baba Yaga's domain, and Baba Yaga, being in a good (and slightly capricious) mood, offers Summer her "heart's desire" (and a talking weasel, as a bonus). Summer isn't sure, exactly, what she wants the most, and Baba Yaga is a little too cheerful telling her that finding that out is part of the fun.
Baba Yaga then kicks her out and Summer is no longer in her backyard but some magical new place. Being a well-read child, she immediately gets it that she's in a Narnia-like situation, and just rolls with it, and the story rapidly becomes the kind of meta that results from a literate 21st century child tumbling into a fantasy book archetype.
The first people she meets is the classic trio of three older women with magic and advice, living on the fringe of civilization. These three have taken the names Donkeyskin, Boarskin and Bearskin after their respective magic cloaks. They lead Summer through their forest, filled with magic trees with leaves that change shape when they fall, becoming things like mice or lizards when they touch the ground.
But the Frog-Tree is dying, and it breaks Summer's heart to watch this particular tree unable to use its own magic properly. The trio tell Summer something is causing magical things to die, and then send her on her way, advising her to go to the “Waystation” which will help her figure out her next move.
She spends a night crossing a desert littered with “sand stars” - scorpions that glow in the dark (a scary / gorgeous piece of imagery) - and almost gets high on the dizzying mirrored sight of the star covered sky and star covered ground, a magnificent vista right out of something like Star Wars or Lord of the Rings.
On the other side Summer discovers the Wheystation and is not impressed with the cheese puns she encounters.
We meet the wheymaster, who could have stepped out of either the Land of Expectations or Diagon Alley, and we first hear about Zultan and the Queen-in-Chains. (Hah! What a title! Take that, Child-Like-Empress!)
Then Zultan and his henchman Grub and his minions show up, hunting for a human girl they hear has stumbled into Orcus, and she has to hide in a room-sized block of cheese while the wheymaster throws them off the trail. The wheymaster then gives Summer some advice on what direction to follow, using a type of prophetic cheese.
Kingfisher is clearly a major cheese lover, and while I’m rather sparing in my own cheese consumption, even I was impressed with her fantasy take on cheeses, including cheese made from the milk of nightmares, cheese aged in moonlight, cheese made with the honey of clockwork bees, and more. All these fantastic cheeses come in every imaginable (and some not so imaginable) shape, size, color, and texture.
It’s so imaginative that, despite rolling my eyes along with Summer when the scene started, I was sad when Summer had to move on from this cheese-version of Honeydukes.
Sent on her way with a cheese-sword (like a cheese knife, only bigger, you know, to deal with really big cheeses :-D) she walks through a world that is described as gorgeous as a trip to any national park, breathtaking even before the magical elements are added in.
But Zultan and his pack are hot on her heels. As she and the weasel run and hide, she grimly hangs on to the mantra that if the Pevensie kids could hack it, so can she.
Along the road Summer meets a hoopoe bird named Reginald – who delightfully talks just like Bertie Wooster – and he cheerfully offers to help her out, much to the weasel's disgust, sneering to Summer about the bird's foppish manners. But Summer is delighted by Reginald's friendliness and his flock of valet-birds that follow him around to make sure he dresses properly for dinner and such, and I was equally charmed by this avian Jeeves and Wooster.
The next day Summer realizes camping makes for a miserable morning, even in an enchanted land. Kingfisher, in a hilarious mini narrative rant, goes on about how there is absolutely nothing poetic about dew, it's just cold water that gets everywhere, and she has clearly been on a few primitive camping trips herself after reading too much Byron.
Summer, cold and damp, braves on, and stumbles on another pun in the form of a "were-house" –fearsome wolf by day, cozy cottage by night –currently trapped by house-hunters.
Kingfisher balances out her howlingly bad puns by having Summer groan each time she comes across one. But the "were-house" turns out to be more than just a pun. Kingfisher takes the idea of Baba Yaga's walking house and teases that idea out – what if it were one of a species? Wild houses, tame houses, herds of houses on migration; it's so stupid its brilliant, and what a wonderful adult fantasy that you could walk out one day and wrangle a house, rather than deal with mortgages and real estate agents. Yes please!
Summer agrees to free him because she had a moment of almost acting just like her mother, and the thought of her mother having already programmed her that deeply pushes her straight into acting brave, and the were-house joins the group.
Then Summer sees her pursuers up close, all riding “Sleipnirians”, which Kingfisher borrows from Celtic mythology and makes weirder with not just eight legs, but also eight eyes and an all over sickening distortion by the mind-bending blurring of horse and spider.
Reginald tries to throw them off while Summer hides. Watching Grub suspiciously question Reginald, Summer is willing to admit she is scared, but knows the right thing to do is turn herself in before her new friend gets killed on her behalf. Before she has to find out if she can follow through on this, there is a brief scuffle that leaves one of the valet-birds dead and the hunters ride on. Safe momentarily, but the stakes have been raised.
And then the stakes get raised again as they find more background characters have been killed by Zultan’s men. Summer is horrified that people died because of her, and the wolf has to firmly tell her that she didn’t do anything, nor should she take on other people’s guilt.
Summer wants to take action, and decides to somehow help the sick Frog-Tree. Reginald advises seeking out a forester he knows of, so the group head towards a nearby town on the way to the forester.
As they continue on, they all give Summer more details about Orcus, and it is a major relief to have a change in tone after a scene with a bunch of dead extras, and it’s fascinating world-building. As much as this follows the pattern of lands like Narnia, Oz and Fantastica, it is an original and creative version of a fantasy land, and we see more of that creativity as Summer enters Fen-town and we get all the delights of a fantasy market town, like Milo arriving in Dictionopolis.
There is also layer of bureaucratic red tape wrapped around the magical elements, as we learn the creatures of Orcus are just as burdened by special permits and proper licenses as we are in this world. In fact, Summer bluffs her way through Customs based on a recent trip with her mother to the DMV, much to her little gang’s delight.
Next Summer and her group meet the Forester, a woman who used to be a dragon, but her body was stolen from her by a girl who wished to be a dragon, resulting in a body switch, and now the Forester is stuck in the body of a human with the heart of a dragon. It’s even worse than it sounds.
She offers Summer guidance both in immediate and general terms; her own knowledge of what can be changed and what must be accepted was hard won, making her advice all the more valuable. She also knows that the Queen-in-Chains is sending out wasps that are causing magical things to die, so they have to find a wasp to follow back to the queen.
But first they stop at Reginald’s family home for advice and supplies from dear pater. And, oh my, his father's manor is the bird version of Totleigh Towers that I never knew I needed but am now completely in love with!
Reginald’s father gives Summer some more information about Zultan and more backstory, and Kingfisher just about breaks my heart with the tragedy of the dogs of Orcus.
There’s a detour from the action as Summer is invited to attend a ball, showing more of the morès of Orcus’s aviary culture. But the party is ruined by another attack from Zultan, almost managing to burn down the family manor, and Summer now has two badass geese guards, assigned by Reginald’s father to protect the little group.
They travel to the Great Pipes, a mountain-sized cactus, with the inside hollowed out to hold an entire city! Here Summer meets the Priestess of the Pipes, who reminds her strongly of her teacher – but the resemblance only goes so far, and Summer experiences her first true betrayal, and Kingfisher writes exquisitely of how mental pain can be astonishingly like physical pain as Summer tries to grasp how in the space of just a few moments everything goes horribly wrong.
And quickly goes from horribly wrong to horribly weird as Summer learns more than she wants about Zultan, the kind of villain who likes to have a civilized conversation with the hero over tea and explain earnestly that they are not truly wicked, and, indeed, there is no good or evil, only power, and all the usual excuses.
He is a quietly insane bookworm who immolates people because he “got in the habit.” Scary!
Then Summer meets another high ranking minion, an antelope-woman, who is cheerfully chaotic in a way that would make your average trickster god sit up and take notice.
She delights in telling Summer a creation myth about Orcus and why her own people are mistrusted, while also describing all the terrible things she might do to Summer, clearly enjoying the chance to mar a piece of Summer’s innocence the same way someone else would delight in carving their initials into a new jar of peanut butter.
Still, she offers escape, and Summer takes it, learning the awful fact that sometimes all possible choices in a given situation are bad. An escape follows that involves more trudging than chases, and Summer is reunited with her little group, who all immediately run off the antelope-woman with threats and curses and shower Summer in love and reassurance, leaving her felling guilty and confused, but also loved for once, instead of smothered.
And, even better, her group caught one of the magic-killing wasps, so they are off find the queen!
But the house-hunters again try to snatch the were-house, but Summer manages to fight back - not with fire and sword - but with the iciest grown-up words she can hurl at them, (words like ‘registered’, ‘permit’, ‘authorities’, etc.), and gets them to back off. It’s a lesson everyone could stand to learn young – act like you have the strongest legal position and you’ll probably get away with it.
But there’s no talking their way out of things as Zultan, Grub and the henchmen attack, and there is time only for the briefest of strategic assessments for where’s a good place to take a stand, and Kingfisher manages to capture the frantic confusion of a fight scene dead on while still making it possible to follow the action.
When Summer sees Grub down, she takes all her anger and fear and shoves it into him via the cheese sword, not ashamed to attack someone while he is down, because he is a homicidal maniac. That briefly makes things worse, as his inner demon is literally let loose, but she takes that on pretty well too, and soon only Zultan is left, morosely looking at the carnage as if it has nothing to do with him, and takes off.
They won the battle, but it cost them dearly, and they have to choose between following Zultan, continuing to seek out the Queen-in-Chains, or just giving up, and as much as Summer wants to give up, the urge to see it through, and to make sure the death of those who just died has meaning, is stronger and they soon find the Queen-in-Chains’ palace.
The queen lives in a cathedral-sized wasp nest, and I bet this is Kingfisher-the-gardener writing rather than Kingfisher-the-author. Oh sure, bees and their hives are all well and good, but a wasp nest can get ugly real fast.
And we meet the Queen-in-Chains.
She’s a dragon.
In fact, she’s the human who stole the dragon body from the Forester, and it has driven her nearly insane. Summer realizes the dragon needs someone to talk to, so she resumes the old role she played with her mother of making soothing noises and reassurances while coaxing the whole story from her. It’s a great deviation from the usual narrative to have the protagonist sit down and talk to the Big Bad Monster and ask what’s wrong rather than attacking.
It turns out she has no control over her dragon body, and she begged to be chained to stop mindlessly ravaging, but Zultan used her before chaining her, and she is terrified he will unleash her horrific destruction again.
In the end, all she needs is a reassurance that everything-is-going-to-be-OK, a line Summer is well rehearsed in saying.
But leaving the queen’s nest-castle Summer walks smack into Zultan, and they have an old fashioned villain/hero standoff, with Summer being reasonable and angry and Zultan being insane and hyper-civilized.
She survives, with the help of her friends, and, thankfully, Zultan does not, and they turn back to somberly retrace their steps homeward.
Back at the beginning, the Frog Tree dies, but Summer is able to plant a seed that springs immediately to life to a Frog-Sapling, and she finally feels ready to go home.
Baba Yaga congratulates her at the portal and Summer angrily demands that she be allowed to remember what happened in a scene that happily tips most fantasy ending troupes on their head. Summer returns home, not happy – but not sad either – to know someday she will have to leave her home permanently, despite her mother’s fears.
Summer is an up-to-date example of the typical portal-fantasy main character, markedly contrasted from her 19th and 20th century predecessors.
Summer doesn't stride with the confidence born of being part of the top portion of the mighty British Empire like Alice and Wendy, and she isn't eager to do something after being told to stay out of the way and let the grownups handle things, like the Pevensie kids. But neither is she bored with American post-WWII affluence, like Milo. And Summer has issues, but she's fully aware of them, and isn't avoiding them, like Bastian.
(Note: I am purposefully not including Dorothy because she did not choose to walk through her portal, but was instead forcibly dragged by that tornado.)
But what is most revealing about her character takes place early on, when Summer is told to choose a candle:
There was a little round table in the middle of the room, and on it stood a dozen candles. They were all colors and sizes. A few of them had been melted partway down. Several were shaped like animals. Summer’s hand hovered over a silver unicorn, with the wick coming out of its horn, but then settled on a plain beeswax frog. The wick had been burned down a little way already and beads of honey-colored wax ran down its sides.
Summer chooses the frog, and is complimented on her choice. Unicorns versus frogs. Let's unpack that, shall we? >cracks knuckles<
A unicorn is a nonexistent creature, a wish for impossible things.
At best, a unicorn represents the human desire to try to go beyond what we think is possible – to push all boundaries and achieve greatness. The unicorn makes a wonderful mascot for the Boston Marathon, as humans each year attempt to break records of what the human body can do in terms of strength and speed, just by putting one foot in front of the other.
At worst, the unicorn represents things that simply cannot exist, and make us depressed by the fact we can’t have them. A unicorn is that Manic Pixie Dream Girl, a ridiculous standard of physically impossible waist measurements and mentally unhealthy mindsets. A “unicorn” is often also used in business terms to describe a perfect company. Many real life companies, especially in Silicon Valley, have been called "unicorns" - except most turn out to be just ordinary nags that cannot magically give every stockholder a billion dollars.
Meanwhile, a frog is a deceptively ordinary beast, full of disregarded potential.
Frogs are common props for female practitioners of the magical arts, from Shakespeare's three witches cooking up spells to J.K. Rowling's young Lily coming home from Hogwarts with teacups full of frogs, much to her sister's jealously. A frog tells Sleeping Beauty's mom she is with child, frogs are known to become princes in other fairy tales, and Queen Elizabeth I nicknamed one of her (many) suitors Monsieur Frog, as a playful suggestion that his love for her might be real – because a frog's love is considered to be noticeably more constant than a fickle unicorn's affection.
In nature, frogs can be a source of food, or used as a weapon, depending on the type, they are the go-to example in the schoolroom for how cycles of nature work, and their ability to lie dormant as eggs throughout droughts are practically miraculous. They are an ordinary, common miracle, and hence overlooked.
Frogs are a symbol of birth, transitions, sexuality and fertility. They show that someone can turn from one thing to become a completely new thing in a very real way.
Unicorns might die (or at least throw a hissy fit) if their mane gets mused, but frogs will dig into the mud and survive, willing to do what it takes to live and thrive, even if that means not looking pretty.
Summer chooses the frog because she would rather have real, solid change in her life than a false veneer of magical transformation that is all style and no substance. Summer desperately wants to be an adult with all the agency that comes with it rather than be a little girl playing tea time with her dolls who has little say in all decisions in her life from bedtime to living arrangements.
Summer doesn't want a holiday from real life. Quite simply, she wants to grow up.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 18, 2021
Saving a single wondrous thing is better than saving the world. For one thing, it’s more achievable. The world is never content to stay saved.
This is such a good book and full of many wonderful things. It is certainly not a book that deserves to go un-reviewed but I don't know quite what I want to say...There is simply so much to this story. So much magic, so many good characters (but Glorious takes the cake and you can fight me on this), so much wisdom, so much humor, so much hope, and even sorrow.
Glorious cocked an ear back at her. 'Things act according to their natures,' he said. 'But sometimes our natures are complicated.'
This is my second T. Kingfisher book I've read and something I appreciate about her middle-grade books (and part of the reason why I think adults would enjoy these books just as much, if not more, than children), is the realism woven throughout the story and the character of the protagonist. On the last page you will not find the end prettily packaged, every conflict resolved, everything as perfect as it's supposed to be, every heart free of brambles, every mind free of scars.
Because that's...not how it works. One thinks everything is supposed to be perfect, is supposed to happen a particular way, but that's empty wishing. And Kingfisher acknowledges this.
Now, I'm not saying the endings she writes are depressing or without happiness but rather that they are simply...real. Summer went through life-changing events, was scared, lost, tired, and hurt, and will undoubtedly be waking up from nightmares at night. But you know she will heal, in time. And I love how Kingfisher gives the readers closure concerning Orcus. Even though this story is over, it isn't the end of Summer. You can imagine what her future looks like and it leaves you satisfied and hopeful.
Summer’s mother believed that books were safe things that kept you inside, which only shows how little she knew about it because books are one of the least safe things in the world.
I think Summer In Orcus is possibly the best Portal Fantasy I've read, and I would recommend it, with all my heart, to adults and children alike.
To adults who read Narnia in their childhood and have found themselves picking it apart in their more mature years, wondering about things they never gave a thought to when they were younger (such as the mental health issues that would have undoubtedly manifested in the Pevensies after all the trauma they experienced).
And to children who don't need books to have breakneck pacing to keep their attention and can appreciate a rich story that takes its time to unfold, letting you get to know its world and characters.
'I keep many books at my home.' He gestured to the books in the tent. 'These are only a few. Those I think might need on this trip, and those I have yet to read and might want, and those old friends that I cannot bear to leave behind.'
If a beautifully-written book with all the whimsy of a children's story coupled with a realistic child protagonist, Baba Yaga, a refreshingly unique albeit mysterious villain, antelope women that are not to be trusted, a vibrant fantasy world, and colorful talking animal characters (including a werehouse, an endearing dancing hoopoe, a snarky weasel, and formidable pair of bodyguard-geese), sounds appealing than this one is for you.
***Summer In Orcus is a completed web-serial and you can read the entire story online (for free!) at Red Wombat Studio.
Or you can just buy the ebook at the usual places if that's your preference. :)
This is such a good book and full of many wonderful things. It is certainly not a book that deserves to go un-reviewed but I don't know quite what I want to say...There is simply so much to this story. So much magic, so many good characters (but Glorious takes the cake and you can fight me on this), so much wisdom, so much humor, so much hope, and even sorrow.
Glorious cocked an ear back at her. 'Things act according to their natures,' he said. 'But sometimes our natures are complicated.'
This is my second T. Kingfisher book I've read and something I appreciate about her middle-grade books (and part of the reason why I think adults would enjoy these books just as much, if not more, than children), is the realism woven throughout the story and the character of the protagonist. On the last page you will not find the end prettily packaged, every conflict resolved, everything as perfect as it's supposed to be, every heart free of brambles, every mind free of scars.
Because that's...not how it works. One thinks everything is supposed to be perfect, is supposed to happen a particular way, but that's empty wishing. And Kingfisher acknowledges this.
Now, I'm not saying the endings she writes are depressing or without happiness but rather that they are simply...real. Summer went through life-changing events, was scared, lost, tired, and hurt, and will undoubtedly be waking up from nightmares at night. But you know she will heal, in time. And I love how Kingfisher gives the readers closure concerning Orcus. Even though this story is over, it isn't the end of Summer. You can imagine what her future looks like and it leaves you satisfied and hopeful.
Summer’s mother believed that books were safe things that kept you inside, which only shows how little she knew about it because books are one of the least safe things in the world.
I think Summer In Orcus is possibly the best Portal Fantasy I've read, and I would recommend it, with all my heart, to adults and children alike.
To adults who read Narnia in their childhood and have found themselves picking it apart in their more mature years, wondering about things they never gave a thought to when they were younger (such as the mental health issues that would have undoubtedly manifested in the Pevensies after all the trauma they experienced).
And to children who don't need books to have breakneck pacing to keep their attention and can appreciate a rich story that takes its time to unfold, letting you get to know its world and characters.
'I keep many books at my home.' He gestured to the books in the tent. 'These are only a few. Those I think might need on this trip, and those I have yet to read and might want, and those old friends that I cannot bear to leave behind.'
If a beautifully-written book with all the whimsy of a children's story coupled with a realistic child protagonist, Baba Yaga, a refreshingly unique albeit mysterious villain, antelope women that are not to be trusted, a vibrant fantasy world, and colorful talking animal characters (including a werehouse, an endearing dancing hoopoe, a snarky weasel, and formidable pair of bodyguard-geese), sounds appealing than this one is for you.
***Summer In Orcus is a completed web-serial and you can read the entire story online (for free!) at Red Wombat Studio.
Or you can just buy the ebook at the usual places if that's your preference. :)
May 10, 2017
Summer in Orcus is just lovely; a portal fantasy with something of the whimsy and warmth of Valente’s Fairyland, and likely to appeal to a similar audience. Some of the characters could’ve come straight from Fairyland, in the best possible way: Reginald the society hoopoe, with his Regency slang; Glorious the were-house, who is a wolf during the day and a house by night; Boarskin, Deerskin and Bearskin, who warn Summer of the cancer at the heart of the world; even the Frog Tree and its dryad.
That isn’t to say it feels derivative, because it doesn’t: it feels very much like itself. But it has something of the same whimsy and imagination, and I enjoyed it heartily. There is something a little darker than Fairyland, I think; perhaps from the very fact that the quest is initiated by the capricious and sometimes cruel Baba Yaga.
It’s a fairly typical quest story, in a way, except that the great confrontation at the end turns out to be uniquely suited to Summer’s talents and experience. There’s a fair dose of bittersweetness, heroism aplenty — and, to my relief, a hope that Summer will see her friends again someday.
Originally reviewed for breathesbooks.com.
That isn’t to say it feels derivative, because it doesn’t: it feels very much like itself. But it has something of the same whimsy and imagination, and I enjoyed it heartily. There is something a little darker than Fairyland, I think; perhaps from the very fact that the quest is initiated by the capricious and sometimes cruel Baba Yaga.
It’s a fairly typical quest story, in a way, except that the great confrontation at the end turns out to be uniquely suited to Summer’s talents and experience. There’s a fair dose of bittersweetness, heroism aplenty — and, to my relief, a hope that Summer will see her friends again someday.
Originally reviewed for breathesbooks.com.
June 1, 2018
Reading a book by T. Kingfisher is like taking a stroll in the countryside with an amiable and pleasant local guide. You amble along, and the terrain changes, and then you're in agricultural fields, and this one is corn, but the corn is a deep violet color, and then a green monkey leaps from the corn and slaps you across the face.
And you nod sagely, because your guide has led you there, and of course the corn is violet, and of course there are face-slapping monkeys living there, and how could you ever have expected anything else?
T. Kingfisher is quite adept at finding green, face-slapping monkeys.
And you nod sagely, because your guide has led you there, and of course the corn is violet, and of course there are face-slapping monkeys living there, and how could you ever have expected anything else?
T. Kingfisher is quite adept at finding green, face-slapping monkeys.
June 21, 2018
I was slightly disappointed in this one. I've read most of her other works written as T. Kingfisher as well as Digger, Castle Hangnail, and the Harriet Hamster books written under her own name. Those all have a quality that this one didn't have so much. This book is not bad - it's still very good - I just don't think it's the best representation of her work.
What I like best of Kingfisher/Vernon is her everywoman, common sense approach to being a figure in a fantasy novel. Her heroines are generally very sensible with a dry sense of humor. I wasn't getting as much a sense of that in this book.
What I like best of Kingfisher/Vernon is her everywoman, common sense approach to being a figure in a fantasy novel. Her heroines are generally very sensible with a dry sense of humor. I wasn't getting as much a sense of that in this book.
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