The Summer Tree

Locus Award nominee 1986, Mythopoeic Fantasy Award nominee 1987.

The Summer Tree is the first volume of a fantasy trilogy on the grand scale in the rich tradition of J.R.R. Tolkien and Stephen R. Donaldson. Here begins a huge narrative told with speed, style, and delight in storytelling.

Guy Gavriel Kay, who worked with Christopher Tolkien on The Silmarillion, still the best-selling fantasy hardcover of all time, now debuts with a work of exhilirating scope and intensity that catapults him to the very pinnacle of the fantasy genre.

In The Summer Tree, five young professionals and students are dramatically precipitated out of their lives in this world into the realm of Fionavar, the true world, of which our own is only a shadow. Led by Silvercloak, the wizard, the five are caught up in the opening forays of a devastating war as the renegade god, Rakoth Maugrim, breaks free from his thousand-year imprisonment.

Maugrim, gathering his evil forces, begins a subtle invasion of the High Kingdom of Brennin, where generations of kings have affirmed their bond to the benign powers of earth and sky on the limbs of the Summer Tree. Now, a new time of sacrifice is at hand.

In a world gripped by the timeless war between the forces of Light and Dark, a rich tapestry of action is woven as the five are confronted by wood and water spirits, dwarves, supernatural animals and the titanic magics of the gods, against which the strengths of humans seem weak and small.

The Summer Tree is the beginning of a story that will echo throughout the fantasy genre for years to come.

“I’m overwhelmed... The Summer Tree is one of those books that change your perception of the world forever afterward.” – Marion Zimmer Bradley

“A remarkable achievement... the essence of high fantasy.” – Locus