It's funny synchronicity that both this book and The River Has Roots are up against each other in the same Hugo category, as they are both fairy borderland stories. They feel entwined together in my mind and it's hard to talk about one without the other. The River Has Roots is about riddles, songs, and promises. The Summer War is about curses, revenge, and unbreakable oaths. They're both about the bonds between siblings where one sibling is lost to the faerie equivalent of the book.

What I like most about The Summer War is that despite being a very fairytale story with a pat ending, all of the characters (even their father) get a little bit of an arc and depth to them.

“I was only twelve,” Argent went on. “I barely even knew, yet. I didn’t understand what you were trying to do. All I understood was that there was something wrong with me, the same thing that was wrong with them, and you were showing me what it meant. What you had to do about it. And I didn’t see anything I could do to stop being wrong, because I hadn’t done anything to start. So afterwards, I was only waiting for you to come and take me, to do the same.”

It's a minor point, but an early plot point in the novel is the judgement of a case by Celia and Argent's father. Their father deliberately brings Argent along to court to show him harshly punishing two men who are involved with each other illegally. But the reason he does it is not from overt homophobia of believing this is truly wrong but from the more subtle homophobia of not wanting his son Argent to be judged negatively by others for something similar in the future. This is the plot point which causes Argent to leave, and it more or less breaks his father for the rest of the novel.

I like it because the more nuanced "I have made horrific parenting mistakes" leaves a lot more room for the father to come around. But also, it feels more applicable as a fairy tale for this age. Maybe I have just heard enough thirdhand stories lately of parents and grandparents wanting to shove young queer kids back in the closet to """protect""" them from the bullying of others that this rang particularly true to my ears.