The Queen of Summer’s Twilight by Charles Vess

(NewCon Press, 2022)

Reviewed by John Dodd

It’s interesting when someone who is very skilled in one form of creativity turns their hand to another, particularly when they are as capable as Charles Vess, whose artwork has been a favourite of mine for some time.

The Queen of Summer’s Twilight is a contemporary story of Janet, a young woman who finds herself being helped by a mysterious young man (Thomas) astride a Vincent Black Shadow motorcycle, who speaks in a manner more befitting a knight of the dark ages. Janet doesn’t think to question why Thomas is helping her, and doesn’t spend much time arguing with him, even though she knows nothing of him and his purpose.

It becomes clear that there is a world beyond ours, where the fey are at work, and forces beyond Janet’s immediate comprehension are afoot with mysterious endeavours. Thomas is a worthy protector though and will not leave Janet’s side, despite her not always wanting him to be there. There are many things that trouble Janet, from her father being the sort of parent that no one wants—seemingly wanting to care for his daughter, but actually being more of a control freak than a father—to the fey and their machinations, none of which are immediately clear. It becomes clear as the book progresses that not only are there things going on that the mortals don’t comprehend, but also that the mortals themselves are more than meets the eye.

What was immediately apparent was that Vess knows how to craft an image with words as well as he does with his art, and in the set piece scenes the imagery was both powerful and striking. It wasn’t hard to follow those parts of the story. Where I had an issue was in the segments between the scenes, where the writing was more there to keep the story going rather than bridge the gap. It felt very much as if there were parts that were fully fleshed out as images, and then parts that had had nothing drawn for them, and while in a graphic novel, it’s often done in such a way that the images lead into each other and the imagination fills in the blanks, this wasn’t the case for me here. Where I would have glossed over the blank spaces between images in a graphic story, I found myself reading parts where the link was there between what had happened and what was going to happen, but it wasn’t visualised as strikingly as the scenes themselves.

I know that it’s all but impossible to write everything in vivid technicolour, but when the difference between the main pieces and the linking pieces is so stark, it took me out of the novel, and I found myself wanting the next scene. In and of itself, this isn’t a bad thing, and there was easily enough interest in getting to the end of the book, but I found myself wanting more of the set pieces and less of the links.

The story references several elements of Scottish folk lore and the language used by Thomas is very much olde-worlde, which is understandable given who and what he is, but like other elements, served to take me out of the story more than I would have liked. If the story had been set in a different time, and the motorbike had been a horse in a medieval setting, then it wouldn’t have been so jarring, but it felt anachronistic (perhaps intentionally so) and I didn’t feel that it fitted with the story.

While I feel it would have worked better as a graphic novel, that could be me just wanting more of Vess’ phenomenal artwork to drool over. Putting that to one side, the story itself had purpose and meaning, whilst drawing on old folklore and new mythos to form something all its own. I wouldn’t rush to read a continuation of this, but I’d be interested in seeing another novel by Vess.

Review from BSFA Review 20 - Download your copy here.