The romantic triangle is a long-held tradition in storytelling, and in a way, that formula is at the center of Long Hot Summer. However, Stephenson's take on this tradition is one that is long on individual character and short on plot, and while the resulting story avoids cliche for the most part, it has a resolution that is a little fuzzy and characters that are hard to root for, because all of them are unlikable at one point or another. In this respect, Long Hot Summer is very realistic, but it's also more than a little frustrating from a story point of view. The book looks good, thanks to McKelvie's clean and iconic artwork, and the character interaction is fantastic, but some readers may find that the plot is a bit lacking.
Based on solicitations and the back cover copy, my expectations were that Long Hot Summer was going to read very much like the kind of thing Chynna Clugston writes at Oni, especially with the mod and scooter elements thrown into the mix. However, while the scene is very much the same, the focus is very different. The result is that while Long Hot Summer will definitely appeal to fans of Clugston's work (especially Scooter Girl), the story has a very different tone. It's much more a realistic look at teenage love and romance, without the humorous elements that tend to flavor Clugston's work. Stephenson presents a story that is serious, dealing with emotional pain, strained friendships and the vagaries of relationships.
The strong point of Long Hot Summer from a writing point of view is definitely Stephenson's ability to write these characters. I believe all of these characters as hip, young adults. They're often mean, usually self-centered and more than a little confused on a daily basis as to what they want, so they're not the kind of young adults I'd have chosen to hang out with, but they make for good reading. The relationships between Ashley, Ken and Steve, the three main players of the book, are wonderfully complicated and go through a variety of changes before all is said and done. The interaction with the bit players in the background is a little more sketchy, such that I don't feel like I ever really get to know any of them, but their main role is how they play off the main characters, so that's hardly a big issue.
Unfortunately, the weak point comes from this very same realism. Long Hot Summer builds and builds, taking us through the early days of the Ken/Ashley relationship, into the breakup, into the early days of the Steve/Ashley relationship, into the friction this causes between Steve and Ken, and then... just kind of ends. It's not that the last page isn't a conclusion of a sort, it's that it's a very unsatisfying one given all that has gone on between these characters, and so it feels like we just had a window into a world of these characters that just closes abruptly. This is quite realistic, as relationships don't tend to wrap up neatly in the real world, but realism doesn't necessarily make for the strongest dramatic structure, and that was a significant problem for me. It might have been less of one if I felt that one of the characters was likable, but they all indulge in just despicable, selfish behavior at one point or another, and so it's difficult to really root for (or against) any of them in the story. Again, realistic but perhaps not dramatically satisfying.
I was pretty happy with Jamie McKelvie's work throughout. His cover gives off a sort of Phil Hester vibe, but his interior work reads more like that of One Plus One's Daniel Krall. There's not a lot of exaggeration in the characters, and in fact they can appear a little stiff at times, but McKelvie does an excellent job with wardrobe and expressions, hitting all the important storytelling notes for a story of this kind. His storytelling is subtle, able to convey someone stewing in their own anger or casting sidelong glances, and that's the kind of emotional subtlety called for here.
