Summers End
Juneau Black
You’re off the edge of the map, mate. Here there be spoilers. Other reviews in this series can be found here.
Did I say Mirror Lake was my favorite? That might have been a bit premature, though it is true that Mirror Lake will most likely remain one of my favorite Shady Hollow books in perpetuity. Maybe it would be more fair to say that Mirror Lake is a season-specific favorite. The series chronology cycles pretty reliably through the seasons, with Shady Hollow starting in summer and Cold Clay and Mirror Lake taking place that fall, while Twilight Falls is set in early spring. With all of that being the case, Mirror Lake will remain the current fall favorite, while Summers End has just become the brand-new summer favorite. I like the idea of picking one favorite for each season, because if I try to pick one absolute all-time favorite we’ll be here all day. I now feel comfortable saying that Shady Hollow has tunneled its way into the Redwall-shaped hole in my heart.
Anyway, we’re back in Shady Hollow and it’s summer. After helping her beloved community patch itself back together following a springtime hate crime, Vera Vixen – intrepid reporter and self-proclaimed detective, always up for a good murder (story) – is more than ready for a vacation. She therefore agrees to chaperone a group of Shady Hollow High School students during an overnight field trip to the prehistoric monument known as Summers End, about a day and a half’s ride away by boat, despite some endearingly naive misconceptions concerning the general behavior of teenagers. She is joined by her best friend, bookstore-owning raven Lenore Lee, and thespian vole Calliope Standish; and she even has her first-ever intern, Athena “Thena” Standish, niece to Calliope. The whole group is expertly shepherded by Mirror Lake librarian Arabella Boatwright, a no-nonsense rat who always seems to have all her ducks in a row. Under her efficient leadership, they make it to Summerhill, a small town featuring a number of charming shops and cafes, with a minimum of difficulty. (I don’t know who needs to hear this, but I would kill to go on this field trip. Yes, it may be possible I am missing the moral of the story.)
Under laboratory conditions, the trip is supposed to allow the students to observe the sunrise from inside Summers End – which is almost literally a woodland version of Stonehenge – on the final day of summer, when the light hits the monument at just the right angle to precisely mark the approach of autumn. As the trip is meant to last a week, the group has booked rooms at Rosewood Lodge, a sweet little B&B run by squirrels Gerry and Cora Rosewood, where the students are supposed to receive lectures and Q&A sessions from the rotating crew of university professors who have been studying Summers End for the last several years: Ridley Durham, the bighorn sheep who leads the archaeological dig; Augustus van Hoote, expert in ancient languages and cousin to Shady Hollow’s Professor Heidegger; Isaiah Ford, a bearded dragon with an interest in prehistoric artifacts but a murky connection to the local universities; Keats Loring, a peacock of a poet; Adelaide Chesley, a porcupine archaeoastronomer; and – to Lenore’s chagrin – funeral expert Ligeia Lee, her estranged sister, who believes oral storytelling traditions may hold the key to understanding their prehistoric ancestors.
Despite the star-studded academic panel, the visit gets off to a rocky start when Vera and her friends realize the professors would like nothing better than to push each other into the river, for a variety of reasons that probably won’t make sense to anyone who doesn’t know academia. Ligeia was recently granted tenure, but van Hoote ruins her buzz by deriding her research. Chesley is haughty, aloof, and rudely prickly; Ligeia tends to rub everyone the wrong way, especially her sister; and everybody hates Durham, though this isn’t particularly obvious upon arrival. Still, the monument-viewing goes off without a hitch until the sun rises enough to reveal Durham’s bloodied corpse in the depths of Summers End, surrounded by candles and little artifacts that seem to suggest some kind of freaky funeral rite. Vera is of course intrigued and Thena borderline delighted at having stumbled into a murder story on the first day of her first internship, until they learn that the Summerhill police force consists of Chief Lawrence C. Buckthorn and Deputy Titus Poole, a wolverine with an axe to grind. This is a problem because Buckthorn is less receptive to outside guidance than Shady Hollow’s Chief Orville, and Poole is staunchly anti-press. The other problem is that suspicion immediately falls upon Ligeia, who was supposed to meet with Durham before the Summers End school viewing and is widely known to have had an acrimonious relationship with him, and Buckthorn seems determined to pin her with the murder.
Having first moved to Shady Hollow to escape her family, Lenore surprises Vera by setting out to prove Buckthorn dead wrong. Though Arabella sensibly takes the kids home a few days earlier than planned, Vera, Thena, and Lenore stay in Summers End, as do the professors, who after all still have a dig to attend; however, things are not what they seem, and the investigators learn about all sorts of unsavory things, from the theft of dozens of prehistoric artifacts to the shockingly bad poetry Loring publishes in the local gazette to Durham’s habit of taking all the credit for his students’ discoveries. The investigation gets a boost from Ford, who turns out to be a former-professor-turned-undercover-archaeology-agent tasked with taking down the underground artifacts market, as well as a timely assist from Lefty, Vera’s favorite consulting criminal. After a tidy runaround and a number of false leads that seem to point to Chesley, Vera realizes almost too late that Buckthorn is up to his antlers in the theft of the artifacts, and that he murdered Durham after they disagreed on the distribution of the profits. Durham’s role in the thefts was driven by a need for grant money, and, as none of the other professors were aware of his black market ties, he ironically had a reputation for successfully securing the funding that kept the dig going. As for Chesley, she accidentally witnessed the murder and spent most of her time evading Vera, the law, and pretty much everyone other than her secret girlfriend, a pika who runs an astrology business. (If you haven’t seen a pika, look them up. They’re adorable. I’d kidnap one if I didn’t know my cat would fucking eat it.)
Though Buckthorn naturally tries to cover up his crimes by doing away with the investigative team, their violent final encounter does have a silver lining: while fleeing Buckthorn’s wrath, they stumble across physical evidence that definitively proves Ligeia’s biggest theory (funnily enough, the one van Hoote disdained). Meanwhile, Lefty brings almost the entire town to catch Buckthorn in the act of trying to squash the whistleblowers, and Poole shocks everyone by doing the right thing and arresting Buckthorn. With yet another murder story tucked neatly under her belt, Vera returns to Shady Hollow and updates a worried Orville, who – based on Vera’s letters – was justifiably concerned that she might return in a coffin. As a cherry on the case, Vera learns that Ligeia has become the new research lead for Summers End, and that she is planning to move into the Shady Hollow B&B to start reconnecting with Lenore while she writes a book on her discovery. The adventure ends with Vera and Orville planning a sweet sunset picnic, though I have every confidence they will descend into chaos again soon enough.
I’ve harped on the predictability of Summers End‘s four predecessors enough that I think it’s worth noting that this is the first Shady Hollow book that actually managed to surprise me. I was expecting the black market artifacts ring to trace back to the Summerhill police, but I really thought Poole would be the mastermind. It was a pleasant surprise when the seemingly innocuous Buckthorn turned out to be a real villain. I also spent most of the book suspecting Chesley while simultaneously knowing she was simply too obvious. While there were elements of the solution that were easy to guess – Loring’s awful poetry, for instance – I was glad that the final twist was actually a twist. Chesley’s romance with Roxanna was another surprise, though I’m not completely onboard with this one because I am not comfortable with the level of acrimony Chesley displayed in their first interaction. I like the idea of an archaeoastronomer feuding with her astrologer girlfriend in theory, but the execution is just slightly off: even if this particular story is only a continuation of their years-long relationship, and even if they do seem to have genuine affection for one another, I can’t get past Chesley’s extremely rude, borderline abusive anti-astrology screed. Maybe that’s how these two flirt, maybe that’s just how their relationship works. Either way, Chesley just comes across as a bitchy porcupine with a giant telescope. Not to put too fine a point on it, but I think Roxy can do better.
Aside from that slight misfire, this book is an absolute triumph. I was never a good student, so I’m not sure why academia is so appealing to me, but the atmosphere and the story and just the general vibes are so perfect. I will never argue with a book that encapsulates archaeology, ancient fairy tales, and amazing baked goods. I love Ligeia’s retelling of Princess Bear, and I really love that she gets the evidence she needs to rub her theory in van Hoote’s beaky face. And, as much as I love the usual Shady Hollow cast, I honestly didn’t miss them, though I did wish Orville was more prominent: I was half expecting him to show up at the end, dragged in by Vera’s worrisome letters, but I suppose he can’t actually leave his station. (You STILL don’t have a deputy, Orville?!?!?!) It was exciting to have a change of scenery, however brief, and I enjoyed getting to know the new cast. I would love to see them in future installments, particularly Ford, who is a dear. I’m also hoping Thena will start working at the Shady Hollow Herald; I have good reason to believe that she will. I love the idea of Vera unintentionally corrupting the seemingly innocent youth while Orville and Calliope watch with pride and despair.
And, on the subject of past reviews: When I was reviewing Shady Hollow, I said that the animals-only cast felt like a gimmick rather than a genuine world-building point. While I stand by that opinion for the first two books, it is a feeling that has lessened over time, to the point that I no longer have it. I don’t know what’s changed; perhaps it is merely that the authors have been leaning more heavily into their world, as Brian Jacques did with the Redwall series, but whatever the case I am absolutely here for it. I did not have woodland Stonehenge on my Shady Hollow bingo card, and now for the life of me I don’t know how I could have been so lacking in vision. I am so entranced by this vision of a world in which animals evolved into a human-like society, while humans apparently never left the trees, if we were ever there to begin with. It’s better that we’re not. Humans would ruin this series, and I never want to see Vera interact with one. I particularly love the smaller details, even if they’re not especially significant: in one scene, an embarrassed Vera has to explain to a puzzled Thena that “vulture” is considered an insult because ancient vultures are believed to have fed on carrion.
Besides the world of Shady Hollow, which has grown stronger and clearer with each successive book, the stories themselves have become far more complex. Shady Hollow was a bit weak in the story department; Cold Clay was, if anything, even less substantial. But Mirror Lake was a slam dunk of a book, and the series is only getting better, the world more nuanced and the stories more tangled. Despite the lighthearted tone of the series, the books cover serious topics, from murder (obviously) to greed and lust to infidelity to racism (or should that be “speciesism”?) to academic exploitation. And it really makes you feel for the characters, even the ones you never meet: the moment I learned Durham had stolen a significant discovery from the Rosewoods’ daughter, I wanted to reach into the book and strangle him in his grave. Some characters do terrible things for understandable reasons, of course, but Durham is one whose death I will never regret. He can rot.
All in all, I am so glad I have stuck with this series in spite of its first two installments. I was right to preorder Summers End in both paperback and Kindle, and now I have the audiobook as well because the Shady Hollow addiction is fucking real and I really love Cassandra Campbell’s narration. I have to admit that with the first book I thought she sounded like a text-to-speech program, but now I hear all the dialogue in her voice. It is impossible to read Lenore’s lines and not hear Campbell’s Lenore voice, complete with the little “Caw!“s she always adds. She’s wonderful, it’s wonderful, everything about this whole series is wonderful, I want fifty more, and if this is the final installment I will cry.
