Summerland

Summerland
by Michael Chabon

Summerland
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Book Summary Information

Author: Michael Chabon
Edition: Music CD
Audio: English (Published)
Format: Bargain Price
Published: 2002-09-16
ISBN: N/A
Publisher: Highbridge Audio

Book Reviews of Summerland

Book Review: Not quite good.
Summary: 2 Stars

The book feels mixed. By this, I mean that the diction often times feels too high for kids, and at other times dialogue and events feel like too much of a cliche for adults. Personally though, I felt like this book overall was a throw away project. The plot, world, and concept all felt as though they were cobbled together from other well know fantasy novels, a little bit of Gaiman, a dash of Tolkein kind of feel. Furthermore, I often felt as if the author didn't trust the reader to quite get the various reference in the book, which would have been to the books benefit, so he instead forced the references down the readers throat killing any fun out of those that understood it right from the beginning. I must, however, give credit for the use of baseball which was unique and interesting, but even this wasn't enough for me to say this book was good.

Summary of Summerland

Summerland is the story of a young hero on a quest through the strange world of the American Faery. This is a fantasy for readers of all ages, set against the background of the American myth. The Clam Island fairies are in grave peril. War is coming, another battle in an ancient conflict. When the band sends for a champion, they get an 11 year-old boy named Ethan Feld. He hates baseball and wants to quit his losing team, but Jennifer T. Rideout loves baseball and won't let him quit. The two find themselves on a journey that includes zeppelins, werefoxes, Indian mythology, sasquatches, wendigos, and the haunted 161 year old husk of George Armstrong Custer. Finally Ethan becomes who he is: a changeling, a hero, and even a man.
In Summerland, his first novel for young readers, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Chabon attempts an American Narnia. Inspired by Lewis and Tolkien, he's created his own magical landscape on which to paint a sweeping fantasy quest, but mixes the same ingredients--folklore and new inventions--in a distinctively American way.

The plot is simple and pure, but takes a long time to tell. The setting is Clam Island, Washington, specifically the area on the western tip of the island known as the Summerlands, which enjoys zero rainfall and yearlong fine weather. Ethan Feld, a self-described really bad ball player, is recruited by a 100-year-old scout called Mr. Chiron "Ringfinger" Brown. Ethan is needed to help the ferishers, essentially fairies, to save their world from eradication. On the great infinite tree of worlds, Summerland is on the boundary between two such worlds, and a particularly destructive fairy called Coyote and his band of warriors are nearby and threatening to destroy everything.

Heroes are desperately needed to counter this threat, and their journey involves a lot of baseball, but also encounters with giants, bat-winged goblins, sea monsters, and assorted cunning magic. The novel features an ensemble cast of equal parts that shine and fade in turn, and yet the undoubtedly fine writing fails to mask the enormity and complexities of the world in which they travel, and the bad guys getting their comeuppance always seems so far away. Readers need to savor every word in Summerland to extract the best flavors from it. (Ages 10 and older.) --John McLay, Amazon.co.uk

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