James Nicoll Reviews

1977’s Some Summer Lands is either the fourth or the fifth book in Jane Gaskell’s Atlan series^1. Either way, Some Summer Lands is the final book in the series².

Cija! As alluring as Helen of Troy, innocent and ignorant, she is fated to be her kingdom’s doom. So far in this series, doom hasn’t arrived.

At least not until this volume.

Cija is for the most part too dim to fully comprehend the significance of the events happening around her. That’s a comfort of sorts. The same cannot be said of Cija’s long-suffering daughter Seka. The offspring of Cija and all-conquering lizardman warlord Zerd, Seka possesses the keen intellect her mother was denied.

Two things prevent Seka from pursuing her own destiny, far from her misadventure-prone mother. The first is that Seka cannot speak. The second, problem is that Seka is still a child during the events of this novel. This fantasy South America is entirely unsafe for little girls.

The young Seka has no choice but to accompany Cija as Cija is abducted yet again and dragged to and fro across war-torn continents. A now adult Seka, writing long after the events in this novel, takes a sarcastic view of her mother’s shortcomings.

The plot may seem to be a series of seemingly random incidents but it’s not. There is a fate—or rather, a FATE!—towards which the ancient lands are hurtling. Ciji is indeed the doom of her kingdom. But which kingdom is Cija’s true kingdom?

~oOo~

I am using the Pocket Books cover because I was unable to find a decent high-resolution scan of the Hodder & Stoughton first edition cover, which I believe is called “hungover barbarian.”

The cosmology of the Atlan books, in which Earth is orbited by a number of moons, each of which is destroyed and then replaced, recalls Horbiger’s Welt-Eis-Lehre (Cosmic Ice Theory), which is of course so well known that I won’t bother you with the details. Did Gaskell arrive at a similar bonkers theory? Or was she drawing on WEL?

Anyone curious about the Earth’s past—whether its zoology, geology, or history—would be well advised to turn to sources other than the Atlan books. Gaskell may have wanted spectacle as a backdrop to Cija’s erotic misadventures; if so, she must not have cared if the setting made any logical sense. It could also be that she truly believed in her odd theories. She wouldn’t be the first SFF author to subscribe to some crazy notions. Alas, lack of room and a desire not to be sued preclude naming her predecessors in this matter.

Rereading old books often involves rediscovery of long-forgotten elements. For example, until I reread this, I’d completely forgot about Soursere, which seems to be a patch of rustic Sussex or Wessex as depicted by Webb, Kaye-Smith, and Powys³ which has been somehow transported to the ancient world. I guess if, as the Ninth Doctor says, lots of planets have a north, lots of Atlantean realms have a Shropshire. Or at least, this one does.

Another rediscovery was less pleasant, which is that Seka was exposed to all too many age-inappropriate experiences. The previous books depicted the Atlantean era as featuring all too many relentless bullies and rapists and the hapless women on whom they prey. Seka may be far cannier than Cija—some moss-covered rocks are cannier than Cija—but Seka is surrounded by some terrible people with little to no self-control. At least her experiences don’t seem to have much scarred the adult Seka. I guess that’s good? Or at least not as bad as it could have been?

Finally, the reason the plot of Some Summer Lands didn’t stick in memory is because Some Summer Lands doesn’t have a plot so much as a series of events, the end of which is signaled by the sudden arrival of the calamity that people have been fearing for the last three books (unless you bought the books in the 1970s, in which case it was the last four books). 1977 is a bit early to claim that someone plotted their novel with D&D random encounter tables, but had Gaskell done that, it would have produced a novel just like this one. Ah, well. At least Chekov’s gun finally got fired.

Some Summer Lands is out of print. Which might be just as well.

1: Depending on whether you picked up the first volume, The Serpent, as a single volume, or made the mistake of buying the two-volume edition released in the 1970s.

2: The author is alive, so she could write another. The events of this book do not lend themselves to further adventures, but that sure hasn’t stopped other authors from writing sequels.

3: The authors of the works Stella Gibbons parodied in Cold Comfort Farm, which unlike Some Summer Lands is a classic you should read.