Super Reader: A Canadian academic tells a small group of students that is a bit more than they thought he is. He lets them know he is a mage from another world, and offers them the chance to journey with him back to this place, for a celebration.

Dave, one of their number, is a little suspicious and breaks away, ending up being transported to another place, and learning to be an axe-wielding warrior type.

There is a bit of a Wounded Land thing going on, because their king, clinging to power, doesn't want to present himself as the usual ritual sacrifice to keep things going.

Paul, one of the students, does the whole tree ordeal thing in his place.

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1255733...

I love Kay's later works, Tigana, The Lions of Al-Rassan, Sailing to Sarantium and Lord of Emperors, so I was prepared to be forgiving of this earlier work. It is a competent enough portal fantasy, with five young Canadians wrenched into a largely Celtic world to fulfill a variety of quests. There is some odd pacing of info-dumping, and the characterisation is not as good as in Kay's later works - did he take the wrong lessons from his work on The Silmarillion? But it's decent enough, and is interesting for the way it draws on various different cultural roots without too much disharmony - the Summer Tree of the title being a particularly good example (Neil Gaiman uses it in American Gods as well, but more intrusively). So I will read the sequel in due course. ( )

Every couple of years I come back and read this series again. Every time, it makes me cry my eyes out. ( )

The Summer Tree begins with a fairly common fantasy theme of a small group of people from our Earth sent to a fantasy world to fulfill a destiny. After that, while it still is fairly common fantasy, there are some unique elements, and the characters are very well done. It isn't tremendously original, but is well written and just unique enough to be a good read. ( )

A WONDERFUL series. Something I believe will be considered a classic. ( )