The Summer Isles recently took home the Sidewise Award for Alternate History (best novel) and was named the second runner-up (against some very steep competition) for the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best science fiction novel. It has now been shortlisted for the Spectrum Award.

The Agony Column:

"The Summer Isles is MacLeod's tale in which England, having lost World War I, encounters the economic woes that beset Germany upon losing WWI, and thus is transformed into the fascist state that Germany became.

"Count on MacLeod to provide dreamily engaging prose wrapped around a diamond hard conceptual center.

"The book is gorgeously designed. It comes sans dust jacket, with a pseudo-suede cover upon which is mounted a lovely little painting. ...One might want to mention that MacLeod himself had a bit of say in what it looked like. I'd certainly say that the cover image and design capture the elegiac feel of MacLeod's work."

Locus Magazine:

"...The long delayed publication of the novel-length version of The Summer Isles, MacLeod's early counterfactual of a fascist '30s Britain, facilitated a welcome double dose of the author's deliciously atmospheric prose and deeply textured scene-setting.

"Ian R. MacLeod... perhaps the most nuanced and descriptively attuned of contemporary UK fantasists... has accomplished something quietly unique here, and his subtle craftsmanship should be applauded.

"MacLeod does a masterful job of limning [protagonist] Brooke's sensations of inadequacy and ambivalence, his fond memories of his trysting holiday with Arthur decades back and his present state of anger and bathos... .But the true genius of MacLeod's contrivance becomes clear in the climactic scenes in London in October 1940: a city uneasily at peace, full of overassertive ceremonial color and pageantry, juxtaposed throughout in the reader's mind with the actual state of London in that month, devastated by the Blitz, paying a heavy but justified price for resisting fascism. Historical irony, the superimposition of two clashing iterations of history, has rarely been this brilliantly used, and thus the fascism latent in our Thirties Britain, the mentality of the Appeasers, comes under a searching, scathing scrutiny."

Ideomancer:

"What makes this an important book... is that yes, what happened there can happen in Britain or even here and it's so damn easy.

"Brooke merely flows from one incident to the next, past and present commingling, but that's much of what the novel is about: how little our lives are truly ours, how much of our lives involve simply treading water. How easy it is to fall into one form or another of social madness, and how difficult it is to do what is right. ...This is, in the final analysis, a dangerous novel... It's an excellent book, and it'll scare the hell out of you."

SF Site:

"One of the strengths of The Summer Isles is that MacLeod does not wallow in the details of his alternate world, although they come out through Brooke's observations. Most importantly, he gives the lie to the idea that 'it couldn't happen here.' The ideology he has engulf England is Nazism, but there is a strong feeling of the English squire underneath. The result is a chilling culture which demonstrates that fascism and fanaticism can take root in any country.

"Perhaps because The Summer Isles started out as a novel and had the novella extracted, this longer version does not feel padded. ... The Summer Isles is as strong as the previously published novella and adds detail to MacLeod's world."

Grumpy Old Man (top ten literary blog):

"Ian R. MacLeod's The Summer Isles is as fine a novel as I've read for a long time...

"In The Summer Isles, the essential proposition is that England lost the First World War. It was England, therefore, rather than Germany, which had large parts of its Empire confiscated, suffered runaway inflation in the twenties, and which saw the rise to power, in the 1930s, of a fascist dictator by the name of John Arthur. (King Edward VIII, you may be relieved to hear, remains on the throne; together with Queen Wallis, which may not be quite such good news.)

"The story covers the period from 1914 to 1940, and it is narrated in the first person by a man who once knew John Arthur. And it is this man who decides, now that he is dying, that the world will be a better place with John Arthur dead.

"The Summer Isles is published by the Aio Publishing Company in the United States. This is a small company, in terms of its output, but it operates to high standards in design. The Summer Isles is far more attractive to look at and handle than any book that I've seen published in England for decades."

Here's what three greats in the field of science fiction have said about The Summer Isles:

“Ian R. MacLeod’s The Summer Isles combines the profound melancholy of Orwell with the precise observance of Graham Green. Bursting with the somber humanity of its narrator, the novel and its imagined millieu are charged with such emotional clarity, they seem artifacts of a history truer than the one we know.” —Author Lucius Shepard

"The Summer Isles is one of the most powerful, compelling, and compassionate novels ever written, in any genre. This is a novel that regular trade publishers didn't want you to read—but one that, in these times, it's more important than ever that you do." —Editor Gardner Dozois

“A poetic and fascinating alternate history that tells us much about how human beings think and act. At times, The Summer Isles reads like a political thriller, but, in the end, it is a story about the human heart told by a master of the form.” —Editor Pat LoBrutto

And here's what readers have said about The Summer Isles:

"I agree with others that the book design is quite striking and original, as befits a book of such high literary quality. Well done! I consider this book one of the top ten best alternative history novels ever written, on the same level as Keith Robert's PAVANE and Philip Dick'sThe Man in the High Castle. What makes these books (and The Summer Isles) great novels is that they have philosophical depth, unlike most alternative histories published today which are simply multi-volume adventure stories that rewrite the military campaigns of major wars. Sadly, these latter inferior books are the ones most likely to become bestsellers. I hope The Summer Isles sells well enough that it will someday be reprinted so that more people get a chance to read it. In one sense I am glad that the major publishers passed on this novel, because they would have simply produced an undistinguished trade edition that could not compare with this one. Even other small press publishers would not have produced a book as distinguished as [this] edition. I am still amazed that Aio managed to keep the price below $30, which is only a few dollars more than a typical trade edition is priced these days. Other publishers should take a look at this book to learn that limited editions can be produced at a reasonable price and still be amazingly well-crafted if the producers are creative." —James Reston

"I'm greatly impressed with my copy [of The Summer Isles]—it is a beautiful piece of workmanship, and I shall treasure it for years to come." —Joe Hartman

"The book itself (The Summer Isles) is the most elegant thing I've seen in a modern novel. I'm quite pleased to have it my collection." —A. Medea

"I'd waited for Ian R. MacLeod's novel-length version of 'The Summer Isles' since reading the World Fantasy Award winning novella excerpted from it several years ago. No publisher had the wit or courage to publish even a limited edition of this masterpiece until Aio stepped up and finally made it available. I just received the book, and it's a beautiful object in its own right. And now, Part I..." —Bruce Chrumka

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