Fantasy Book Review – The Summoner by Gail Z Martin
Fantasy readers who crave a good search with an interesting cast of characters will find fun turning pages in Gail Z. Martin’s The Summoner. The hero of the story is the Prince of Marjolan, Martris Drayke, a second son of the king happy not to inherit the throne from his father. But Martris, who goes by the short name Tris, lives in fear of her older half brother, Jared, who is a totally reprehensible person. A violent womanizer and general abuser, Jared unleashes a brutal blow in the opening of the book in which he kills his father and Tris’s mother and sister. Tris barely escapes alive along with a loyal captain of the guard, a bard, and a man-at-arms.
With supernatural help and Tris’s ability to communicate and control spirits, powers she inherited from her sorceress grandmother, they escape to the countryside. Now on the run, Tris and her companions travel to a neighboring kingdom to seek refuge and help. They hire a notorious but skilled smuggler and mercenary named Vahanian to help them. While surviving various dangers, Tris learns more about her powers and realizes that she is a Summoner who can, among other things, summon spirits and help them cross over to the afterlife.
As the new King of Marjolan, Jared desperately wants Tris dead and sends soldiers and bounty hunters after him. Swords and spears aren’t all Tris has to dodge because Jared is in league with the sinister wizard Arontala, who blocks Tris’s escape with a spell that summons magical beasts. Arontala is also imprisoning Tris’s sister’s soul, and Tris longs to set her free.
As the story progresses, the character of Kiara, the princess of Isencroft, is introduced. Years before, she had been engaged to Jared, but now, naturally, she despises the idea of marrying him. To weaken her kingdom and force her to seek Jared’s protection, Arontala has cast a spell on Kiara’s father and afflicted him with a devastating disease that can only be cured by Arontala’s death that will break the spell. Hoping to find a cure for her father, Kiara embarks on a journey recommended by a religious brotherhood. On this journey, he inevitably meets Tris and romance blooms along with an alliance to destroy Jared and Arontala.
The strengths of this book are its good pacing, realistic action, pleasant use of magical and supernatural elements, and a tight plot. The action does not linger and the story progresses comfortably. The fight scenes are exciting and plausible, meaning the characters don’t survive against all odds. Their victories make sense and when they are caught it makes sense. For example, the chapters in which Tris and company travel with a caravan of merchants and are attacked by bandits and slavers are some of the best in the book. When it comes to fantasy elements, Martin is good at using familiar horror devices, such as ghosts and vampires, in nice ways. Several times Tris has to deal with angry spirits that haunt her respective neighborhoods, and on occasion she uses the powers of the spirits against her enemies. Also a race of vampires inhabits the earth. The plot is clear and adequately motivates the characters, and Martin never leaves the reader wondering what is going on.
The book’s weaknesses, however, prevent it from being top-quality literature. The dialogue is unconvincing and looks like it was generated by software that collects bad movie lines. Then there’s the overuse of the chapters that end when Tris goes to sleep or passes out and then the next chapter begins with him waking up. Yes, it is okay to use this transition at times, but it is a persistent crutch throughout this narrative to close and open chapters. Finally, some of the scenes felt straight out of Star Wars, especially the parts with Vahanian and his love interest. A good chunk of the end of the book was definitely also sewn from a Star Wars pattern.
Altogether, The Summoner is a fantasy book that provides readers with suitably interesting popcorn-style entertainment. It has well-paced search and adventure action that doesn’t allow the reader to get bored within a competently constructed narrative. I rate him with three swords and a chastity belt because there are no hot love scenes.