There are so few times when I cannot finish a book and this is one of them. If giving this a zero star rating was an option, I'd do it. By doing so, maybe there's the chance of (hopefully) saving anyone else the pain of picking this book up and getting even ten pages in. I literally signed up for Good Reads because I was so outraged by this book. If you don't usually read a lot of fantasy and like books such as Eragon, you'll probably find The Summoner to be a lot more enjoyable than I did. If you can put up with the 100+ pages of them wandering around angsting and reinforcing what a bad man the antagonist is, you'll find the story, once it gets going, turns out to be all right if you like basic chosen one/quest-type stories. It would be slightly more tolerable if the story was plot-driven and didn't take almost half the book to actually start. Said friends are little better, even the soldiers and mercenary. The main character is twenty going on twelve, complete with such overwhelming concerns such as whether his friends will still like him when they find out he talks to ghosts.

I don't know if the book was miss-marketed or what, but this is definitely not the dark fantasy hinted at on the cover. With even the protagonist using what's generally considered dark/evil magic, I expected a dark, gritty fantasy. One does not see necromancers as the good guys very often, or at all, really. The cover is excellent, the summary intriguing. Pinterest (for Morgan and Gail) I'm usually not very critical of books outside of whether I liked them or not, but The Summoner is an exception to this rule. In addition to the online sites listed below, you can find me on Martin is also Morgan Brice, which is her pen name for urban fantasy MM paranormal romance. She is married and has three children, a Maltese and a golden retriever. She enjoys attending science fiction/fantasy conventions, Renaissance fairs and living history sites. At age 14, she decided to become a writer. Her favorite TV show as a preschooler was Dark Shadows.

The first story she wroteat age fivewas about a vampire. Martin discovered her passion for science fiction, fantasy and ghost stories in elementary school.

The Summoner by Gail Z. Martin