Last month (so long ago! we were but pale young curates then) I instructed you to acquire for yourself a copy of Alaya Dawn Johnson’s The Summer Prince. Did you do it? You marvelous kittens; you may have some pie. As for the rest of you, you are cast out into the outer darkness, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. Go watch the Divergent trailer, or something.
Let us admit this together: how long into the book did it take you to realize that Enki and Gil are just nicknames for Enkidu and Gilgamesh from The Epic of Gilgamesh? Guys, I TOLD you I was garbage at picking up on metaphors. And then it works on so many levels: the systemic oppression, the difference between civilized city life and the “freedom” of the plains, the love triangle with Shamhat, the homoeroticism, the struggle with death…
“He was yearning for one to know his heart, a friend.”
RIGHT, THOUGH? Did everyone figure this out right away? Did you see the names Enki and Gil and chuckle knowingly to yourself, thanks to your always-on-point knowledge of ancient Mesopotamian literature? You think you’re so great. You’re not that great.
Things that were so great about this book:
1. June’s relationship with her mother’s new wife, Auntie Yaha. If there is one thing I can get behind, it is resenting characters on a protagonist’s behalf. I can’t help myself. If a protagonist hates someone, so do I. Every time I watch Fiddler on the Roof, I’m furious with Tevye for even thinking about forgiving Chava for marrying that Russian Gentile, which is ridiculous because I’m not even Jewish and also I support interfaith marriages. The point is that I love when YA novels have complicated, nuanced parent-child relationships instead of a bunch of Peanuts-style background adults, and I slowly came around and started liking Auntie Yaha too.
2. Gays. Gays everywhere. Just being gay and nobody even cares. Just normal gays running around falling in gay love at a dance. How much did the scene where Enki and Gil first meet remind you of that scene from West Side Story where Tony meets Maria? Only instead of a white guy and a white girl pretending to have a Puerto Rican accent, it’s two Brazilian dudes who are really excellent at doing the samba?
3. It’s a set in a (only semi-dystopian) future that’s not exclusively dominated by Brutalist architecture and brown-grey paint! Everyone isn’t grim and starving and covered in dirty rags! (Well. There appears to be some minor starving going on in El Salvador.) They have hairstyles and jewelry and arguments and throw parties and wear red, just like all other humans everywhere.
4. June. June is kind of a self-absorbed asshole, which I find entirely relatable in a protagonist, in the right amount. She…let us say that she does not grasp Enki’s struggle. “Let’s make art! Rebellion is so fun! Wow, Enki, your friends are really poor, huh.” It takes her some time to stop playing at revolution; she’s very much the Marius to his Eponine (because ADMIT that Marius was a total dilettante when it came to overthrowing the government, and was in fact totally relieved not to be heroically dead like all his friends, no matter how sad he sounds during “Empty Chairs.”) She cares a lot more about status and comfort than she would like to admit. She’s capable of saying vicious things to the people who care about each other. She’s a good artist, but not as good as she thinks she is, at least not at first. She’s a braggart, and she’s talented, and she knows it, and I love that about her. She’s a jerk, but she’s a jerk with so much potential.
5. People die in this book and they stay dead, and then the living have to figure out how to deal with it.
6. People, young people, have sex in this book, generally good sex but also some ill-advised sex, gay sex and straight sex, and then they continue being alive and go on to do other things.
7. There are no white people in this book.
8. Do you remember the physical sensation of longing? Of wanting so desperately to be famous — to be talented and to do good work, yes, but mostly just to be fucking famous and important and better than other people — that it hurts your guts and make you act like a shitty person? This book remembers.
Things that were not so great about this book:
1. Bebel. I wanted to know so much more about Bebel, and Lucia, and another half-dozen of the supporting characters who were just barely developed. I’d be willing to lose a third of the time June spends mooning over Gil and Enki to see a few more scenes with Bebel that really justify their eventual mutual respect and friendship.
2. I think there are two kinds of science fiction readers: the ones who are here for the world-building and the ones who are here for the stories (this is probably a gross exaggeration and not at all true, but it’s my website; shut up). This had some great stabs at world-building (a South American matriarchy flourishes in a pyramid city after nuclear war and a mysterious male-only sickness wipe out a huge chunk of the global population? Yes, please), but a lot of important questions were hand-waved away or clumsily exposited when it didn’t need to be. There are more of those “As you know…” sentences that plague so many sci-fi/fantasy novels than are strictly necessary.
3. There are times when June’s art feels more of a MacGuffin than anything else. She tells us she’s the best artist in Palmares Tres, but it’s such a generic and amorphous understand of what art is that it doesn’t feel nearly as sharp or immediate as her feelings for Enki.
4. Gil. Poor Gil. He loves to dance until he passes out and he loves having sex with Enki, and that’s…kind of it. His relationship with Enki is supposed to be endgame — June always knows that Gil comes first in Enki’s heart — but there is so much more time spent on her connection with Enki, their growing understanding of one another, their work together, that it feels like Enki and June are the real couple sometimes.
The Questions That Remain
How much of your heart is left after it was broken by Ueda-sama? I have nothing left. Do you?
Are you going to start whispering “I’m June Costa, and I’m the best artist in Palmares Tres” when you lift weights?
Tags: alaya dawn johnson, the summer prince, women novelists, ya
GOD FUCKING DAMN IT GILGAMESH AND ENKIDU I’M SO ANGRY RIGHT NOW
RIGHT??? I FELT SO FLIPPING DUMB
In fairness, it’s not like The Epic of Gilgamesh is required reading in schools. In terms of general public knowledge, I feel like it’s more of a trivia question than something most people would be expected to know.
Either that, or I just went to crappy schools, which is also very likely.
(And in terms of what I can speak about knowledgeably — yes, Marius was a total dilettante. He only joined the revolutionaries because he was rebelling against his grandfather, and spent about as much thought on their cause (none) as he had previously spent following his grandfather’s ideals (unquestioning obedience.))
I’m glad it wasn’t just my bad reading comprehension and I’m not the only one who thought the world-building was a little fuzzy. Yes, it’s boring to have to sit through a big chunk of sci-fi/fantasy exposition, especially at the beginning of a book, but I think it was definitely underdeveloped here.
I loved this book, but I thought the world-building was flawed enough to be a distraction. The thing that bothered me the most was: if this is an enclosed pyramidal city, and people inside of it can live upwards of 200 years, why is there a large enough population of young people to be a significant demographic force, (complete with large-scale schools and yearly student awards) but there doesn’t seem to be any problems with overcrowding?
I didn’t read the book, so I’m scrawling this comment in the dust of the outer darkness with fingers worn almost to the bone, but I think where people run into problems when they’rebuilding worlds in any kind of fiction is that they think that, because they’re not explaining the whole world, it doesn’t have to be fleshed out. You need to have all the relevant details of your world in place (who lives where, who eats what, whether Portugal exists) so that your writing stays consistent. That doesn’t mean you have to explain every little detail to the reader (looking at you, GRR Martin), but those details need to exist. & obviously it’s VERY hard to do, but if you don’t, especially if you’re writing for a stereotypically nitpicky sci-fi audience, it can be distracting.
Oh yeah, I’m sure that as an author/creator it’s hard to strike a balance and provide enough of the right background information to satisfy readers without going overborard. And I certainly don’t expect a hard and fast answer/explanation for every little aspect of life, especially in one average-length (for YA) book.
I think I was especially disappointed in this case because “South American matriarchy flourishes in a pyramid city after nuclear war and a mysterious male-only sickness wipe out a huge chunk of the global population” is such an interesting premise but it was hardly explained at all.
Well, if they can condense a two-man tent, knives, and a shovel into a pack the size of June’s hand, maybe they are just really good at spatial management?
It did seem that people were generally old when they have kids – June’s parents had been married 40 years when he died, and she was 14 or so, and I think he was in his second century of life? Gil’s mom had him at 16 and was a total freak because of it. And mostly only children, though there were a couple of siblings around. Anyway, it’s a loose interpretation, because, yeah, Gil and June both have big gardens to lounge in, and how much room can a vertical city actually have, but I think there weren’t that many kids – if two kids from June’s school are up for the Queen’s Award, there probably aren’t just tons of kids to select from.
(Of course, if I have to spend time justifying the world building, it’s likely not done well to begin with, so – yeah.)
I had a math teacher in high school who used the phrase “weeping and gnashing of teeth” a lot. You would think that frequent use of such a phrase would bode ill in a math class, but he was one of the best teachers I’ve ever had.
At any rate, it sure is dark out here in the outer darkness. Anybody want to lend me a flashlight so I can purchase this book?
I’m only 50 pages or so in, and I’m finding it a little difficult to get into the story. I find the worldbuilding a little distracting too. I can’t really figure out what’s going on and how this society works! I do like inventive worlds, but only when I can figure out what the heck is going on.
+ to the semi-dystopian world, normal gayness, normal adolescent sex.
Sad about Gil’s character development. And I really thought she was writing June to eventually realize that hierarchical societies should be rejected since, as June recognizes throughout the book, even this matriarchy has some huge problems. (And of course patriarchy isn’t an option. Which I love.) She just never gets there. Even the blinder vision June actually has on the class divisions never really develops beyond the “wow, poor people are poor and I’m not” phase.
I’m also notorious for mis-remembering plot (didn’t even remember that Enkidu was a character in Gilgamesh), am currently having trouble remembering the exact ending, and could definitely be wrong.
I super super super hated the ending.
I didn’t love the rest of the book either, but the ending was really the absolutely limit for me. Luckily, it was also the end of the book!
SPOILERS.
I’m afraid of admitting that I picked up on Enki the trickster instantly, but thought that Gil was so flat he couldn’t possibly be Gilgamesh, because his whole job seemed to be to stand around lookin’ pretty and not doin’ a whole helluva lot.
The gang fight in Salvador was a really beautifully realised scene and well-done, and I was _mainly_ impressed by how this dome society – as compared to, say, Monica Hughes’ Devil on My Back (which is for a younger audience but w/e brain implants, similar social stratification) had an extremely strong grasp on how institutional infrastructure decay actually works. I loved the light tattoos, since my acquaintances are installing magnets in their hands to feel various fields, and I was amused at the maybe-shoutout of Rivet Surfing for Scott Westerfelds’ magnetic Uglies hoverboards.
The author also NAILED how _incredibly boring_ and time-consuming it is to produce installation art. Both of those things were pretty well perfect, as was the detail about the phones and varying levels of technology available at different levels of the Pyramid City.
I also liked the CIA namedrop near the end, and it would have been nice to see way more of Bebel – there was room, too. I WANT TO FIND OUT WHAT HAPPENS NEXT. Maybe only to Alaya Dawn Johnson, like in her next six books!
WAIT, what was the part about the CIA? Missed that. (Also
for some reason the gang fight was a little fuzzy for me, so I
didn’t realize Lucia’s brother died until five
pages later.)
IT’S RIGHT AT THE END and super-poorly explained but they kill the first Summer King for his CIA involvement in order to cement the tradition and then everyone dies before it can be clarified that it’s only supposed to be done, like, _twice_. Seriously, it’s a paragraph. But it _is_ mentioned, and I found it grounding.
Back up on the installing magnets in their hands a minute. It works? Are they doctors? What’s it like?
This is so late you’ll never see it.
You can slice open your hands and put super-magnets into them. They’ll bond to your nervous system for a while and you’ll be able to feel magnetic fields, because the magnet still works even though it’s inside you. It is apparently a DEEPLY STRANGE feeling.
Here is the relevant article. I know a few of the body-hackers in it. I do not have any implants myself. http://io9.com/what-you-need-to-know-about-gettin…
1. I am very dim, and have never read Gilgamesh, so it was
NEWS TO ME. (Should I read Gilgamesh?) 2. I agree with Mallory on
every point. 3. Ueda-sama was the best.
Not reading ANY of the above comments because I’m only halfway through it (my library hold only just came through!) buuuut I wanted to participate and say I’m enjoying the book.
Wow, the Enkidu/Gilgamesh thing sailed waaaaay over my head. I thought the book was creative and refreshing. But why was it called the Summer Prince, when he was the Summer King?
There was approximately one paragraph somewhere near the middle where June talked about how the grandes kept referring to Enki as the summer prince rather than as the summer king, I think as a way to minimize him.
GILBERT & SULLIVAN REFERENCES FTW
GILBERT & SULLIVAN REFERENCES FTW
I'm 5 weeks late to this discussion, but I just finished the book, and I'm glad to read this because while I don't know any Brazilian cereals I do know that this felt a little tourist-y to me, especially as they traveled to Salvador ("trees! beaches! fields!" – Google Earth level connection to that trek.)
And a couple of things felt really off – June says "may as well be in English" about her exam, which is kinda funny until you remember how very many things in English she's already discussed – songs mostly, but it seems like she's referencing American culture pretty frequently. I don't know – it was a 'hey, remember how we're not in N. America here because we use nicknames and the occasional food reference and also the seasons are different?' rather than an immersion.