Review: A Spear of Summer Grass

A Spear of Summer Grass by Deanna Raybourn

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



I became a fan of Deanna Raybourn through her Lady Julia series (and am desperately hoping there are more full length novels coming in that series!). I picked up A Spear of Summer Grass knowing from reviews that it's nothing like the Lady Julia books and hoping I would love it anyway. I believe the mark of a good author is that they can write books that don't feel like clones of each other, or like attempts to recapture a magic that has succeeded before.

In this book, Raybourn accomplishes a completely new work. A Spear of Summer Grass has its own distinct purpose and feeling, almost like it was written by someone else. I was impressed that this colonial Africa felt completely alive to me, just as Victorian London is brought to life in Raybourn's other books.

The setting is Kenya in the 1920s. It's a brutal, vivid landscape. Delilah is a woman with scandalous moral views - she has had multiple husbands and lovers, and takes multiple lovers in this book. It's much more adult in that way, and I had a hard time liking Delilah because of her casual approach to such affairs. She is consistent, however, and she also grows up during her time in Africa. She encounters dangers of the wild and dangers caused by politics of white people in power. I really enjoyed her interactions with the Masai, and Delilah finally won me over with her independence, her views and actions on equality, and ultimately her selflessness.

Raybourn has demonstrated her ability to bring setting and characters to life in more than one flavor, and I admire her for it. Did I love it as much as Lady Julia? No. I've never been very interested in the 1920s as a setting - but she drew me into it anyway.



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