Review: The Summer Prince by Alaya Dawn Johnson

“They think they’ve gone to heaven,” he says. “They don’t realize that means they’re dead.”

Matriarchy. Class. Monarchy. Those words evoke a lot of feelings for people, whether these factors influence them or not. And why shouldn’t they bring out these emotions? One of them defies the “norm”, another is a daily reality, and the final is a form of government many people aggressively protest. Yet all three come together in a beautiful dystopian novel, so beautiful because by my definition, it is not a dystopia at all. It’s a telling tale of politics and changed times and what happens when the system is warped. And among it all are an artist, a lovesick boy, and a king – a king meant to die.

Today, we’re looking at The Summer Prince by Alaya Dawn Johnson.

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These days, it seems like all of my good books come from Diversity in YA, and this is no exception. I put it on my wish list for my birthday and got it – but it was only on the sixteenth of this month that I finally finished it, approximately 30,000 feet above ground.

I mean, I was in a plane. But regardless.

I think what drew me to this book was the cover. They say never to judge a book by its cover, but I’ll admit, I do it all the time – which is WHY a good book cover is incredibly important if you’re trying to sell a book. The Fault in our Stars has an iconic cover. The Song of the Lioness series has beautiful illustrations. And Grasshopper Jungle is – well, Grasshopper Jungle. You know what I mean.

I do not know who designed the book cover, but I do know the intentions behind it, which you'd have to find out by reading the book. But it’s a grasping cover, one that makes you want to ask questions. Who is this girl? What are the lights that seem to come from within her skin? And by all means, who IS the Summer Prince?

Let me just say this: a cover that makes you ask, and a book that gifts you answers, is ALWAYS an A-plus combo.

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Sometimes a narrative’s voice isn’t really noticeable . . . and sometimes, that’s okay. The voice is a 1^st person point of view from the perspective of June Costa, a waka living on the eighth tier of the pyramid city of Palmares Três. Due to her living on the eighth tier, she is considered somewhere between middle and upper class – most likely upper, due to her stepmother being an Auntie, or politician. And before you ask, her father is dead – her stepmother is married to her actual mother. Yay, LGBT representation!

Due to June’s position, both as an upper class person and a teenager, we get to see into a lot of thoughts in her head. Many of them have to do with her position above the other classes (particularly those classes who live on the verde, or poor area of the city), and on her opinions of others, like her fellow classmates. It’s a good view to have, because she is a person with a lot of things to think about and speak out about. After all, she is an artist, and most artists, I’ve found, have quite a bit to say.

Most YA books tend to have the same style, or at least as far as I’ve noticed. This is no exception; the character development is straightforward, the writing is clear, etcetera. Not much to say here except that I wish there was some more detail and clarification – I couldn’t follow along with some of the descriptions, especially when June was in the verde! I understand this is a tricky business because I have similar troubles myself, but it only becomes more evident with some of the maneuvers June has to do to get through the verde. More on this later, when I get to the spoilers.

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June’s story begins with the selection of the Summer King in Palmares Três. Now, who is the Summer King, you ask? The Summer King is ritually selected to act as the queen’s “consort”, and he, after his term is over, will select the new queen. Now, this is normally pretty pointless, because the only person available in the room at the time of selection is, well, the queen.

“But T.J.!” I hear you saying. “Why can’t he just pick somebody outside the room? Can’t he just go and bring them in?”

Actually, no. He can’t – because his selection begins the moment his throat is slit. He has that time, until he dies, to select the next queen. Because that’s the thing about Summer Kings – they are picked to die at the end of term.

Now, why does this matter so much? Well, the new Summer King is named Enki, a boy from the verde, and June figures out very quickly that he is an artist. His art? I have no room to reveal that yet, but let’s just say that when June realizes this, she quickly works to make him her collaborator. After all, she has a bit of an award to win, and it’s not like she’s inconveniencing him – after all, he’s already made her best friend his own lover . . .

Not enough detail? No, too much, really. If you are still confused, you will find just about as much information on the back of the book as you will find in this review. Just believe me – the plot is a WHIRLWIND, and I love its progression. Believe me, it’s worth every penny.

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Time for SPOILERS! If you don’t want to be spoiled, DON’T READ THIS NEXT PART! Skip to the end and you’ll know my verdict.

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This isn't a typical dystopian/utopian novel – most dystopias become overturned, with the government/society being torn down and built anew. That does not happen in this book; in fact, the focus is not about overthrowing the government, but exposing its corruption, and later attempting to escape it. The end result is the repair and, one can only assume, the reparation of what went wrong – but I can’t go into that, even in the spoilers section.

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I mentioned earlier that there was some LGBT content? I wasn’t kidding. There are TWO clear-cut LGBT couples in the book – June’s parents, and the Summer Prince’s relationship with June’s best friend, Gil. The book also demonstrates diversity in the obvious way, being that these are Brazilian persons with dark skin, even to the point where the Summer Prince, Enki, calls himself a negro for his deep, dark skin. Add to that the language bit, and there’s diversity flying out everywhere. There’s even a reference to when they attempt to sing in English!

I love diversity in books, no matter what it is. If you are looking for a YA diverse book – well, this is it!

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Now, I’m going to go ahead and alert y’all to a potential trigger, because I know that I enjoy knowing about these sorts of things before I read books. About halfway through the book, you learn that before the events in the story, June’s father had taken his life – from what I could garner, and from what was described, he had fallen into depression and had filed for what my guess is euthanasia. Shortly after this, a character within the story takes his own life as well, although neither of the scenes are graphic, and neither character is young when this happens. The excuse is made that “oh, they were old, it was their time, technology makes us live too old anyways”, but then again, I don’t buy that bullshit. Take it as you will.

As for any other warnings, I would advise that there are two sexually explicit scenes, although the one isn’t so much “explicit” as much as it’s just obvious that somebody is doing the deed. I wouldn’t let these sway you, because it’s YA fiction anyways, but just in case you wanted to know. There are also two graphic deaths that take place, but neither of them are suicides, and the scene in which they die is rather short. The descriptions that come later are also graphic, but not to the same extent.

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The one other thing that I can think of to mention is that I REALLY like that this was a matriarchy, and the problem wasn’t that it was a matriarchy – there was definitely some humanist arguments, but largely, the problem in and of itself was not that the rule was by women. Basically, you could’ve substituted a patriarchy in and the complaints would’ve been about the same.

I LOVE when writers do this. I love it when they go ahead and mess with the social order, and then show that by the way, it’s OKAY. It’s the same reason I read diverse books; it shows that it’s not the end of the world, and that it’s really not so different (i.e. bad) as people think it is.

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Spoilers end here!

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So how does the book do? Let’s return to the 10-point system.

Voice: 8/10. It’s nothing out of the ordinary, which is fine, but it also didn’t necessarily stand out to me. So it’s not bad, but there was room for improvement.

Style: 7/10. Still not seeing anything new, but it was still good, so thumbs up here. That being said though, points are lost with the lack of detail.

Plot: 10/10. This was really the high point of the book, that the plot was both predictable but also surprising to read. As I said, it’s not your average dystopia, and for that, I’m very grateful.

Readability: 9/10. It’s not a challenge, so it loses points, but either way, no problems here. Unless you’re going to throw a hissy fit over the occasional Portuguese, then I wouldn’t worry about it.

Average: 8.5/10. Seems fair enough to me, although I would maybe round that up to nine. After all, I took off points for the lack of challenge, which may just be a me thing.

So, would I recommend this book? A hundred percent I would! I adored this book, even though it took a little time for me, personally, to get through it (not because it’s long, but because university and finals are hard). It was a great spin on a typical story of its genre, but took the idea in a new direction by playing with core elements and eliminating the need for a total reconstruction at the end. Overall, if you need something to pass the time with on a couple of airline flights, The Summer Prince is one of the books I recommend a hundred percent!