Brian Aldiss's epic science fantasy trilogy tells how scientists from earth;, living in a sociologically altered orbital observation station, study the conflict between primitive human-like and cattle-like beings on a planet with seasons lasting centuries. Atheneum's summary of the second volume reads as follows.
Brian Aldiss's magnificent Helliconia trilogy continues with a novel even better than the acclaimed Helliconia Spring.
Whereas Helliconia Spring was set within a small compass and covered many generations, its successor takes place in six months and shows us most of the extraordinary planet Helliconia, from the circumpolar regions of Sibornal to the salable glaciers of Hespagorat. This is probably Brian Aldiss's grandest and most sumptuous novel. His picture of an interplanetary summer that lasts for centuries is astounding, his characters memorable, from the Ice Captain to the whores of Matrassyl. We meet Billy Xiao Pin, who comes to He'llconia from a different world-one that still dreams of distant earth. And we meet the embattled king of Borlien, who, beset by enemies, trusting none but his phagor guard, decides to divorce his beautiful queen and marry instead the child princess of Oldorando. His struggle to do so, while his foes, sensing his weakness, encircle him, forms the plot of this novel, while in the background the Helliconia forests burn.
When the first volume of the Helliconia trilogy appeared, readers and reviewers alike were quick to recognize its enormous achievement, and the book was among the five finalists for the 1982 Nebula Award. Helliconia Summer is destined to bring many more readers to that marvelous invented world that John Fowles calls "a remarkable feat of the imagination."