I don’t know much about James Hetley, but I do know that I found his online presence on Livejournal to be interesting enough to buy his books. He’s written four of them, published by Ace, in two distinct series; this is the first novel in one of those series. According to his website, he’s an architecht and retired kempo karate instructor who lives in Maine; I’d've guessed the Maine part, obviously. He served three years in the U.S. Army during Vietnam, and his list of Weird Writer Jobs is pretty good — one of them is ‘trash collector.’ (I do not envy him that position.) The Summer Country was his first novel, and he appears to be getting a good deal of positive reviews from interesting places.

Maureen Pierce lives in a hardscrabble town in Maine; a degree in forestry apparently wasn’t good enough to get her a job, and at the moment she’s an evening clerk at a convenience store. She’s also a bit crazy; how crazy, we eventually determine over the course of the book. One night, while walking home (her car died), she runs into a guy in an alleyway who apparently wants to hurt her; some other man ends up killing the first man, and he walks her home. She instinctively trusts him, and doesn’t know why; he reminds her of her sister’s ex-boyfriend, who was an awful, abusive figure. Brian (the man who saved her life) is nothing like the other man, but strange things are happening around him. What is this ‘summer country’ he speaks of, and why are so many people after Mo?

Well, I’m sorry for ruining the story, but the “summer country” is probably exactly what one should guess — a land just removed of ours, sort of like Faerieland. However, there the Old Ones (those with magic running in their blood) rule and most of humanity are slaves. Over there, might makes right, and the land of King Arthur Pendragon has dissolved into ruin and chaos. Mr. Hetley’s summer country is not a nice place; it isn’t a land where Tinkerbell floats around and flowers bloom eternally. One of his characters is very gifted in the magical and non-magical formation of slaves, animal and human; he owns a dragon who would cheerfully eat people. Other characters are just as amoral in their own ways; they lie for personal gain, own slaves of various sorts, and plot against all of their neighbors.

This is not a nice, pretty story with faeries and fluffy bunnes; when I say that Maureen is crazy, I really mean she’s crazy (at one point, she lists all the various disorders she’s been diagnosed with). She has dissociative episodes, among other things, that serve as major plot points. We see murder, torture, and general mayhem on the screen. Maureen’s existence in her Maine town, even ignoring the whole summer-country thing, isn’t pleasant in and of itself, between her crazy, the generally poor economy, her strange relationship with her sister, her awful job, and her terrible boss. About the only things that Maureen has going for her are the music she loves (Celtic music, of course) and the trees in the nearby forest.

However, despite the harshness of the plot and setting, I loved this book. It made lovely use of old themes in a new and refreshing form. The action kept me on the edge of my seat, and it paid off. Maureen’s emotional arc in this book is quite painful, but satisfying in so many ways. She learns a lot and heals a lot. Her sister, Jo, is possibly even more interesting; she has an incredible strength of mind and purpose that she discovers along the way. Generally speaking, she’s a little nicer and easier to like than Maureen, but it’s Mo’s story that forms the basis of the novel, and Mo who suffers and works through it to reach her conclusion. This is not a YA book, despite the cover (well, it looks YA-ish to me); the themes and events are definitely adult. I’d recommend this book quite highly, though I would caution that there is a significant amount of discussion regarding rape. 4.5/5 stars.