The Summoning (Darkest Powers, Book 1)2008
I’ve been venturing from the Vampires, venturing from romance and I ventured into this young adult book by Kelley Armstrong. Honestly, I mistook it for the Kim Harrison young adult book (Once Dead, Twice Shy) I had thought about picking up on my last retail bookstore jaunt. I really dig what they are doing with the young adult covers. Making them trade paperback size does cause them to be a bit pricey, but the cover art is pretty compelling on some of them. My used bookstore doesn’t currently have a Vamp Only Rack – but what they do have is a pretty display of YA books with the Twilight series on the top row – and some very pretty books below. The YA part does generally mean no sex and seems to feature teens as the main characters. So – if you’re looking to rub one out – this genre is likely not for you…
The stories and characters however seem to be more real than those in the romance novels. I guess there isn’t the need for the contrived girl hates boy but then falls madly for him scenes that seem to be the major plot point of most of the romance I’ve gotten my hands on of late.
The Summoning begins with a little girl. Chloe, seeing ghosts in her basement. Flash forward 10 years to Chloe being a ghost seeing teenager. The years between have been ghost free, her memories suppressed and the ghosts possibly being held away by her dead mother’s necklace. Till one day when all hell breaks loose. Late blooming Chloe gets her period, starts seeing ghosts and ends up in a group home. Through her interactions with the other students she finds out she’s not schizo as the shrinks are saying, she really is seeing ghosts, in fact, she’s a necromancer. She’s also opened to the world of other supernatural beings, shamans, witches, werewolves – all kids in this group home. They figure out there’s something going on, plan an escape and Chloe falls right into their hands (perhaps that’s a spoiler, but believe me, when you’re reading you KNOW something is going to go wrong!). Really the story doesn’t wrap up in a nice little bow. No one lives happily ever after, in fact, you don’t really know anyone’s fate at the end except Chloe’s. If ever you wanted a sequel – this is the time. Really, it ends not quite mid thought, but certainly mid story. I knew as I was getting near the end that everything was either going to be shoved into a few short pages or that I was going to be left hanging. I’m almost glad I was left hanging. I hate it when complicated plots are suddenly resolved, when I’ve just read 300 pages of something only to have all the ends that were still loose at 298 pages to be finished at page 302. Luckily there’s a preview chapter to The Awakening – and I’ll be picking that up ASAP. I want to know more about these kids, I want to know how the story ends. It will be interesting to see if book 2 stands alone – I doubt it does, as it must just pick up right where this one left off.
4 outta 5 stars
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