GOLD Medal Winner of the Global E-book Award for Fantasy
SILVER Medal Winner of Global E-book Award for Young Adult.
Honorable Mention in the Writer’s Digest Self Published book awards.
Finalist in the Indie Book Awards.
BRILLIANT DEBUT: “In the tradition of other mythic tales with animal protagonists like Watership Down and Birth of the Firebringer, here’s Song of the Summer King: a story that … here’s Song of the Summer King: a story that is only “Young Adult” in the sense that both young and old can enjoy it . . . Go get it for yourself, your kids, and your friends.” ~M.C.A. Hogarth, Author, 5 Star Review
A SONG YOU WILL NEVER FORGET: “The characters are… alive. There is no other word for it. When you read it, you are with them, immerse yourself into this world.” ~Kevin J, Amazon 5 Star Review
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ONE WILL RISE HIGHER . . .
Shard is a gryfon in danger. He and other young males of the Silver Isles are old enough to fly, hunt, and fight–old enough to be threats to their ruler, the red gryfon king. In the midst of the dangerous initiation hunt, Shard takes the unexpected advice of a strange she-wolf who seeks him out, and hints that Shard’s past isn’t all that it seems. To learn his past, Shard must abandon the future he wants and make allies of those the gryfons call enemies.
When the gryfon king declares open war on the wolves, it throws Shard’s past and uncertain future into the turmoil between. Now with battle lines drawn, Shard must decide whether to fight beside his king . . .or against him.
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This is a lovely book! Jess Owen has created a wonderful world and populated it with gryfons and gryfesses. She has given them islands to live on and a pride to live with. There are also wolves on their islands, wolves that Shard has been told are implacable enemies. Shard is a young undersized gryfon who joins the annual hunt to earn his place in the pride. He who stumbles across an exiled gryfon one day. Because he fears exile if he doesn’t hunt successfully, he suddenly wonders how this exile has survived with no pride, how he hunts and where he finds solace. Thus begins Shard’s education. He learns much more than the things the exile can teach him. He learns himself. There are portions of the book that can only be described as lyrical, flawless in execution. I must give the author kudos for having a good sense of time and place and describing Shard’s character so completely without anything ringing untrue. I loved this book!
Are you missing books with animal protagonists, in the style of Richard Adams’s Watership Down or Tad Williams’s Tailchaser’s Song? If that answer is yes, you have an entire new series to read. Jess E. Owen does for griffins what those authors did for rabbits and cats, and it is delightful.
The Summer King Chronicles start with Song of the Summer King. Shard is one of a conquered pride of gryfons dwelling on an island with a Nordic climate. He’s desperate to prove that he is loyal to the king despite being one of the race of natives who fought against the incursion; he’s even wingbrother to the king’s son. But the king doesn’t trust him, and that mistrust drives everything that follows. Shard, it seems, has a secret… and he doesn’t even know what it is yet.
The next two books, Skyfire and A Shard of Sun, develop the world and the challenges Shard must move through if he is to become the destined Summer King of the series title. They are significant. They involve dragons, wolves, eagles, lions… and a lot of misunderstandings. There’s a lot of painful history to unravel, and it’s all up to Shard and his friends and family to figure out how to make things right again.
There are a lot of reasons to love these books. They’re billed as “all ages” fare, and they are in the best way: the kind of stories you might have read as a tween that you re-read as an adult and think, “Yeah, that still talks about the fundamental stuff that matters.” They are refreshingly clear-eyed about right and wrong; there are laws of nature, and we don’t get to fight them, and morality often involves understanding that some things can’t be changed. The antagonists in the story really are antagonists, rather than villains: they have reasons for what they do, and the chance for forgiveness and redemption lurks everywhere. And there are a multiplicity of wonderful relationships: family and chosen-family; parents and adoptive parents… romance comes to both youthful striplings and old folks who thought they were past such things, and deep friendships are as important as any of those other types of relationships.
The ecosystem is believably described too. If you hate books where the author doesn’t have any idea what she’s talking about when evoking nature, here’s a series you can pick up for relief. Owen’s gryfons are also well-done: their body language, their habits, their biology, all of it is consistent. There’s never a moment where you’re jarred from the narrative because, say, a creature with paws has done something that requires hands.
Go forth, my friends, and binge-read! You will be rewarded. 🙂
Written in the spirit of The Black Gryphon by Mercedes Lackey and Larry Dixon, Jess Owen’s Song of the Summer King takes the “gryphon as protagonist” story one step further and gives us a world without humans. The story follows gryphons and wolves and has a strong myth quality about it. The wolves and gryphons speak, ravens once knew the languages of all animals, and prophecy and ancient lore abound.
My only complaint about Song of the Summer King was that I was looking for an adult novel. That was a problem with my expectations, not with Owen’s writing. It’s an excellent YA novel. Furthermore, despite rarely going into YA, I would find myself forgetting it was young adult. I believe it works just as well if you wouldn’t normally read YA.
There are four more books and a short story collection after this one and I’m just about through all of them now. If you like Song of the Summer King, you owe it to yourself to keep going. If you can snag one of the hardcover editions, definitely do it. Jennifer Miller’s cover art is beautiful on any edition, but the hardcovers really stand out. I’ve started a gryphon shelf and Owen’s books stand out.