The Summer Prince

by Alaya Dawn Johnson

Overview

A heart-stopping story of love, death, technology, and art set amid the tropics of a futuristic Brazil.

The lush city of Palmares Tres shimmers with tech and tradition, with screaming gossip casters and practiced politicians. In the midst of this vibrant metropolis, June Costa creates art that's sure to make her legendary. But her dreams of fame become something more when she meets Enki, the bold new Summer King. The whole city falls in love with him (including June's best friend, Gil). But June sees more to Enki than amber eyes and a lethal samba. She sees a fellow artist. Together, June and Enki will stage explosive, dramatic projects that Palmares Tres will never forget. They will add fuel to a growing rebellion against the government's strict limits on new tech. And June will fall deeply, unfortunately in love with Enki. Because like all Summer Kings before him, Enki is destined to die. Pulsing with the beat of futuristic Brazil, burning with the passions of its characters, and overflowing with ideas, this fiery novel will leave you eager for more from Alaya Dawn Johnson.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780545417792
Publisher:	Scholastic, Inc.
Publication date:	03/01/2013
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	5.80(w) x 8.38(h) x 1.03(d)
Lexile:	780L (what's this?)
Age Range:	14 - 17 Years

About the Author

Alaya Dawn Johnson is the author of The Summer Prince — which received three starred reviews, was longlisted for the National Book Award, and was named a 2013 Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year — and Love Is the Drug, the 2014 Nebula Award winner for best young adult novel. Her short stories have appeared in many magazines and anthologies, most notably the title story in The Memory Librarian, in collaboration with Janelle Monáe. She lives in Mexico.

Read an Excerpt

From THE SUMMER PRINCE

When I was eight, my papai took me to the park to watch a king die.
At first, all I saw were adults clad in bright blues and greens and reds, in feathers and sequins, in cloth glittering with gold and jewels. Carnival clothes for carnival day, but covered in the early morning chill with darker coats and shawls. I looked up at this mass of grandes like I had stumbled into a gathering of orixas. I couldn't see their faces, but I could see their hands, the way they twisted them around each other, or clicked through a string of rosary beads. Some held candles, some held flowers. They were dressed for carnival, but they were quieter than I remembered from other years. The legs and torsos swayed and jostled, but no one danced. A few of the men cried. For the first time in my life, I knew a carnival without music.
I held my papai's hand. He did not look at me. A strange sigh swept over the crowd, like the wind howling past the cliffside during a winter storm. A woman's voice boomed through the park, but I was too young, too close to the ground to understand.
"I can't see," I said, tugging at my papai's hand.
With some difficulty –- our neighbors had pressed forward, packing around us so tightly he hardly had room to turn around –- he knelt.
"This is how the world works, June," he said to me. "Are you sure?"
I didn't understand his downcast mouth, the crying from the crowd, the austere finality of the woman's voice on our city's speakers. Carnival was supposed to be fun and beautiful. But I knew, because my papai never asked me idle questions, that I was to consider my answer. That if I said no, he would leave me on the ground where I could see nothing I didn't understand, and understand nothing of what I heard. And if I said yes, the answer would change my life.
I nodded.

Editorial Reviews

Eighteen-year-old artist June Costa is a citizen of Palmares Três, a vertically structured city in what was once Brazil, with the rich at the top, the poor at the bottom, and a vital tradition of music and dance. Its centenarian queen keeps a tight rein on the tech—electronic and pharmaceutical—that allows for intensive state security and bodily modification. Privileged but rebellious June and her best friend Gil live on Tier Eight, and when they get involved with Enki, a beautiful bottom-tier resident who will serve a year as the summer king before his ritual sacrifice, her political art gains attention, and things get dangerous. In her YA debut, Johnson (the Spirit Binders series) depicts a future that’s recognizably Brazilian and human—June may have nanohooks, holo screens, and light implants, but 400 years on, teens still resent their parents and find ways to subvert the technology their elders theoretically control. With its complicated history, founding myth, and political structure, Palmares Três is compelling, as is the triple bond between June, Enki, and Gil as they challenge their world’s injustices. Ages 14–up. Agent: Jill Grinberg, Jill Grinberg Literary Management. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

An art project, a rebellion and a sacrifice make up this nuanced, original cyberpunk adventure. June, 17, remembers the last sacrifice of the Summer King, nine years before. In a future Brazil, after climate change, wars, natural disasters and plague have devastated the world, Palmares Três is a peaceful and just city, technologically supported with holos, nanohooks and bots. Beneath the city's glittering facade, however, there's another reality. Youth is stifled while the governing Aunties keep Palmares Três static in a class-stratified society centuries behind the rest of the developed world. June and best friend Gil, both relatively privileged artists, happily spend their spring dancing, creating public art and voting for the newest Summer King to be sacrificed for the city's prosperity after a year. When gorgeous, dark-skinned Enki is elected, both June and Gil fall for him--but it's Gil he takes as a lover, and June he takes as an artistic collaborator. Their love triangle, in a city with no gender-based limitations on romantic or sexual partnerships, is multifaceted, not the usual heroine-chooses-between-two-boys dynamic. As the trio dances--often literally--around one another, June must negotiate between the extremes of stasis and post-humanism, learn to see beyond herself, discover the meaning of integrity, and maybe even save her rotten-at-the-core and best-beloved city. Luminous. (Science fiction. 14-18)

Kirkus Reviews

In her YA debut, Johnson (the Spirit Binders series) depicts a future that's recognizably Brazilian and human…With its complicated history, founding myth, and political structure, Palmares Três is compelling, as is the triple bond between June, Enki, and Gil as they challenge their world's injustices.” — Publishers Weekly, starred review“As the trio dances-often literally-around one another, June must negotiate between the extremes of stasis and post-humanism, learn to see beyond herself, discover the meaning of integrity, and maybe even save her rotten-at-the-core and best-beloved city. Luminous.” — Kirkus Reviews, starred review“In this YA debut, Johnson paints a brilliant picture of a seemingly lush paradise hiding a core rotted by class stratification, creative stagnation, and disenfranchisement. Evocative, disturbing, and exhilarating, this story leaves much for the reader to ponder, from the nuanced characters to fascinating central themes, including the impact of technology and the role of isolationism in a perilous world. Like leaping into cold water on a hot day, this original dystopian novel takes the breath away, refreshes, challenges, and leaves the reader shivering but yearning for another plunge.” — Booklist, starred review“In precise prose Johnson evokes an utterly foreign setting, complete with technologies that push at the limits of what it means to be human, and the relationships that delineate the social landscape are intriguingly unconventional and startling in their intensity. The story itself is thematically rich, encompassing the political nature of art in a time of vast upheaval, the potential of power to corrupt, the tension between tradition and innovation, and the toils and rewards of underground creative expression…. An imaginative and thoroughly realized addition to the sci-fi genre.” — Horn Book"There's a great, fresh audacity to Johnson's YA debut." — Entertainment Weekly“Rife with political turmoil and seeped in culture, this unique and highly fantastical dystopian romance is both intriguing and imaginative. Johnson excels at building rich and gorgeously complex worlds, and her prose shines with a sophistication that's uncommon in YA literature. This beautifully written novel will likely find a home with fans of Alison Croggon and Rachel Hartman.” — School Library Journal

From the Publisher

Gr 9 Up—Four hundred years earlier, the Y Plague nearly decimated the world's male population. Upon the ruins of Brazil, Queen Odete constructed the pyramid city of Palmares Três. Here artist June Costa, 16, dreams of greatness, but instead finds herself tangled in an unusual and tragic love triangle involving her friend Gil and Enki, the rebellious Summer King who must die at year's end so the city and its complex matrilineal political system can continue to thrive. While Enki chooses Gil as his lover, he is impressed with June's daring, and they collaborate to create groundbreakingly memorable artwork. But as Enki's inevitable sacrifice draws near, the two flee Palmares Três, a move that will shake the very foundation of their city's future. Rife with political turmoil and seeped in culture, this unique and highly fantastical dystopian romance is both intriguing and imaginative. Johnson excels at building rich and gorgeously complex worlds, and her prose shines with a sophistication that's uncommon in YA literature. This beautifully written novel will likely find a home with fans of Alison Croggon and Rachel Hartman.—Alissa J. Bach, Oxford Public Library, MI

School Library Journal