The Summer War
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Our view
“The Summer War” is a graceful fairy-tale novella in which Naomi Novik turns a child’s angry curse into a story about siblings. Furious when her eldest brother leaves home, Celia unknowingly dooms him never to find love and then has to break the spell herself. Old fairy-tale echoes, lightly modernised, and a look at how revenge feeds on itself give it weight. It is short enough for a single sitting.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
In this poignant, heartfelt novella from the New York Times bestselling author of Spinning Silver and the Scholomance trilogy, a young witch who has inadvertently cursed her brother to live a life without love must find a way to undo her spell. Celia discovered her talent for magic on the day her beloved oldest brother, Argent, left home. Furious at him for abandoning her in a war-torn land, she lashed out, not realizing her childish, angry words would become imbued with the power of prophecy, dooming him to a life without love. While Argent wanders the world, forced to seek only fame and glory instead of the love and belonging he truly desires, Celia attempts to undo the curse she placed on him. Yet even as she grows from a girl to a woman, she cannot find the solution—until she learns the truth about the centuries-old war between her own people and the summerlings, immortal beings who hold a relentless grudge against their mortal neighbors. Now, with the aid of her unwanted middle brother, Celia may be able to both undo her eldest brother’s curse and heal the lands so long torn apart by the Summer War.
Where the score comes from
The sources average 8.1 across 87 ratings — not yet many, so the reader vote carries 37% of the weight and the rest pulls toward the Fantasy average of 8.0. That is how 8.0 comes out.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hardcover | 8.1 | 87 | 100% |
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
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The same shelf — Fantasy — and a score of 8.0, the closest to this book.
