I am completely in love with Summer in Orcus, a charming portal fantasy by T.

She finds help from several inhabitants of Orcus, particularly a shapeshifting wolf (at night he turns into, not a human, but a pleasant cottage) and a hoopoe bird with Regency manners and a helpful flock of small valet-birds in bowler hats.īut she also finds that she’s being pursued by the fearsome Zultan Houndbreaker and his aptly named servant Grub, who hunt her in the name of the Queen-in-Chains. Entrusted with a tadpole acorn by the tree’s dryad, Summer takes on a quest to save the Frog Tree, and perhaps more. But: “There is a cancer at the heart of the world” the woman in the bear skin tells Summer, and Summer can see that the Frog Tree is dying. Initially she’s in a long hallway with purple stained glass windows featuring a mischievous-looking saint, whose book proffers some cryptic advice like “Don’t worry about things you cannot fix” and “Antelope women are not to be trusted.” A door then leads Summer to a forest in the magical land of Orcus, where she meets a trio of shapeshifting women and is charmed by dryad-inhabited trees whose leaves turn into mice or frogs as they drop to the ground. And suddenly Summer finds herself in a strange, magical world, not at all certain where she’s going or what she’s supposed to do there. Instead, though, Baba Yaga looks deep into Summer’s heart and mind, then hands over a talking weasel to Summer and shoos her out of the house. When Baba Yaga offers Summer her heart’s desire, Summer really isn’t sure what to answer, though shapeshifting or being able to talk to animals do come to her mind. (“Summer’s mother believed that books were safe things that kept you inside, which only shows how little she knew about it, because books are one of the least safe things in the world.”) But Summer’s mother is no match for Baba Yaga! One spring day Summer is found by Baba Yaga ― actually, she’s found by Baba Yaga’s chicken-footed house, which manages to convinces Baba Yaga that Summer is the girl they want for some unstated purpose. Summer is a young girl whose overly protective, clingy mother tries to protect her from every possible danger, although Summer is allowed to read books about magic and shapechanging and such. I had so much fun reading this portal fantasy! Review first posted on Fantasy Literature: All the stars!! One reviewer described this award-nominated novel as 'Narnia with teeth,' and that's a great summary.

Summer in Orcus by T. Kingfisher