Living the Fictional Dream

The Summoning is a new young adult novel by one of my favorite adult urban fantasy authors, Kelley Armstrong. There are mild spoilers in this review, so if you’d rather stay pure you might wait until later to read this, but I’m not going too deep. The spoilers are more about the premise and set-up, not about the ending.

The Summoning takes place in Armstrong’s Otherworld universe, which includes witches, warlocks, werewolves, vampires, shamans, half-demons, and necromancer. In fact, I reviewed the most recent paperback in her adult Otherworld series, No Humans Allowed, earlier this summer. The Summoning, however, takes a different approach, asking what would happen if someone had one of these powers and had never heard of the supernatural world.

Chloe sees a dead janitor walking the halls at school one day, freaks out (who wouldn’t?!), and manages to get herself sent to a groups home for emotionally troubled teens, earning herself a diagnosis of schizophrenia. But, while she’s at this home, she discovers that she’s not the only one with strange talents, and that’s when things start to get interesting.

Overall, I enjoyed this book very much. The characters are great, especially Chloe and Derek, and the premise is interesting. I also love how Armstrong takes her Otherworld universe and goes somewhere completely new with it. She could have made a Y/A series based on Savannah — a teen character in her adult series — but, instead, she breaks new ground and gives us a whole new mystery to chew on.

I also like the dynamics between the characters. Angst and drama is part and parcel of merely being a teenager. Add to that supernatural problems and the possibility of more going on than meets the eye with the adults in your life, and things get interesting really quickly.

But, I was very disappointed in one element of The Summoning, the ending. I have the same complaint about this novel as I mentioned when talking about Meg Cabot’s Airhead in this post: there’s no ending, the book just stops. And that really drives me nuts!

The worst part was, I totally wasn’t expecting it from Armstrong. The beauty of the adult books in the Otherworld series is that they are complete. There are overarching character struggles that carry over, but each novel has its own mystery that is solved by the end. You have closure. But The Summoning does not.

According to Armstrong’s website, Chloe’s story will be a trilogy. I’m glad to know that, because now I know that I will get the closure eventually; however, if I’d known this up front, I would have waited to read the novels until all three had been released. I hate going into a book thinking one thing, and then, surprise, having to wait until a later book release (months or years away) for any closure. There should be warning labels right up front! I’m even OK with elements that carry over, but I just want some closure on some of the levels, and The Summoning does not deliver on that regard. We end with Chloe… well, I guess I won’t give that away, but suffice to say that all is not well for her at the end of the novel.

However, if that’s not the kind of thing that bothers you, then I would definitely recommend this book, both for Y/A readers and for people who’ve enjoyed Armstrong’s other books. It’s really well written and an enjoyable read. But if you have issues with lack of closure, you should wait to dive in until the trilogy is complete.