Summerwood ; Winterwood

E. L. Chen’s Summerwood/Winterwood is a duology, two stories published back-to-back as one book. The first story, Summerwood, finds 12-year-old Rosalind Hero Cheung, (called Hero), and her 16-year-old sister, Juliet/Julie, spending the summer with their grandfather, Walter Denison, in Cabbagetown, a neighborhood in Toronto, Ontario. The girls’ parents have left on a working vacation and have placed their daughters in the care of Walter, a famous children’s book author, and his quirky housekeeper, Mrs. Westcott. Walter had great success with his “The Summerwood Trilogy”, based on himself and his now deceased siblings as young children, and he is eager to write a sequel now that his books have had a popular resurgence. Despite the fact that Walter is a cantankerous, mean, old man suffering from writers’ block, Hero is a big fan of her grandfather’s work, and she hopes to find a hidden world during her visit to his sprawling gingerbread-trimmed mansion as depicted in his Summerwood books. Julie is a disgruntled somewhat rebellious teen who knows that her parents’ marriage is on the rocks, and she has no interest in her grandfather, his books, or in following the rules.

Hero eventually finds the door to Summerwood in one of the mansion’s closets (while looking for cleaning supplies). The woods are populated with talking animals and a beautiful queen who lives in the White Tower, the Lady of Summer, just as Hero’s grandfather had written. The idyllic land is a magical realm, yet Hero soon learns that its residents live in fear of a powerful enemy, the Winter Stag. The queen informs Hero that she is needed in the Summerwood to help them resist “dark forces” and that she must bring her sister with her as well. After returning to the real world of her grandfather’s mansion, and eager to share the experience, Hero brings her sister Julie into the magical forest land. Unfortunately Hero soon realizes the Lady of Summer is not a benevolent queen when she has Julie kidnapped and will only return her if Hero brings the queen the head of the White Stag, thereby ensuring an eternal summer. With the help of a humorous clothes-hating rabbit sidekick named Thaddeus, Hero finds and slays the stag, even cooking and feasting on his carcass. When Hero returns the stag’s head to the White Tower, she finds her sister enchanted with the queen and unwilling to return home. Hero ultimately figures out that the White Queen is actually her grandfather’s bitter sister Vivian who was left behind as a child in the Summerwood all those years ago. With the help of some of the forest animals, Hero kills Vivian and injures her dragon before escaping back to reality. Unfortunately, the dragon follows the girls back through the closet into Grandfather’s house and burns it to the ground. The girls’ parents return to retrieve their children and announce that they are getting a divorce. Walter soon releases a new book based on Hero’s stories and Julie’s drawings, leaving Hero depressed and in shock from her ordeals.

In Winterwood, three years have passed since the events of Summerwood, and Hero now goes by the name Lindy. She is a troubled, rebellious teenager. Her sister Juliet is happy and attending art school in Toronto while Lindy is skipping school, fighting, drinking, acting promiscuously, getting grounded and enrolled in counseling. The trauma of her exploits in the Summerwood have damaged Lindy, and she may be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Troubled and confused, Lindy visits her sister in Toronto and ventures back to what has become the Winterwood, now frozen in a perpetual winter. The animals struggle to find food in the icy forest, and the dark witch Eris, who is “older than good and evil”, has replaced Vivian in power. Eris tasks Lindy with finding and killing Aurelian, “the horned child born from the birch that sprung from the stag’s skull”, thus bringing back the Summerwood. But Eris is unaware that Aurelian and Lindy are already fast friends and that Lindy is somewhat attracted to the young stag. Lindy and Aurelian embark on a quest together to the Dark Tower that ultimately leads to the return of order to the Summerwood/Winterwood and Aurelian’s rebirth as Aesculus, the White Stag.

E. L. Chen has crafted an engaging and magical tale reminiscent of, and obviously influenced by, C. S. Lewis’s “Chronicles of Narnia” series. Aside from the somewhat one-dimensional grandfather figure in the first book, Chen’s characters are well-developed, relatable, flawed, and complex. Chen transitions effectively from modern day Toronto and a teenager’s daily trials, tribulations and family troubles to a dark, surreal, fantastical world inhabited by sarcastic clothed rabbits, evil queens and talking birds. The battles and killings in which Hero engages are described in detail and not Disney-fied, the lessons learned not black and white or glossed over. Aside from a trigger warning due to some violent duels and graphic death scenes, and a minimal offensive language warning for those readers on the younger side, this duology will fit the bill for fans of C.S. Lewis, Lewis Carroll, Eoin Colfer, Madeline L’Engle and Diana Wynne Jones. Summerwood was longlisted for the Sunburst Award in 2020.