The Summoner (Chronicles of the Necromancer - Book 1)

World: The Winter Kingdoms is a typical fantasy world. While not necessarily a bad thing, in this case the world seems flat and uninteresting. As our protagonist makes his way from place to place the land doesn't come alive in the readers mind; we get little more then a bare bones description of his travels. There are no breathtaking vistas or harrowing mountain heights, and even the haunted forest doesn't seem very foreboding. It's just a wood where monsters hang out.

Magic: While magic plays a big part in this book, it's inconsistent and muddled. Our protagonist is a Summoner, one who can communicate with dead. He uses this power to help the dead (kind of like the Ghost Whisperer) and to illicit their help as well. There are also other magicians who specialize in other areas, such as fire magic, earth magic, healing magic and blood magic. Although it has the potential to be an interesting element of the book, the magic is left relatively unexplored and so lacks any sort of sophistication or verisimilitude. One of the principle antagonists practices "blood" magic and yet we know next to nothing about it except that it involved blood (duh!) and that it is increasing his already incredible powers. You would think that something this important would be delved into at least a little more thoroughly then it is.

Characters: In my opinion, this is where "The Summoner," commits the unpardonable sin. While the novel begins well enough, the "tragic" event at the beginning the book happens so soon into the narrative that there isn't any time for the characters to be developed enough to really "feel" the impact of their demise. Furthermore, even though the main character is shown to be distraught over the tragedy, we don't know him well enough to have a real emotional attachment to him or to sympathize with his plight. It only goes down hill from there, as the characters are revealed to be formulaic and predictable. In the end, the characters felt two dimensional and are uninteresting, and I didn't really care for any of them.

Plot: While it has a fairly interesting premise and it begins well enough, in short order it falls totally flat on execution. Let me just let you in on the biggest problem though. There is no real climax in this book! As I drew closer to the end I was wondering when something BIG would happen, and it never does. There is one situation towards the end of the book, where the main character is faced with a challenge that puts him in mortal danger, but I wouldn't call that a climax, because it revolves around an issue that isn't raised until the end of the book and it is peripheral to the main story line. The book finishes with the feeling of "they lived happily ever after." You know there is a battle coming, but that doesn't give us anything interesting to read in this book. Where is my reward for reading THIS book?! It doesn't have one, so beware.

Summary: I cannot recommend this book. As a matter of fact, it is one of the worst books I've read in a long time. It's over 600 pages long, but don't be fooled, it is not an epic story and it reads more like a book of about 250 pages. If you don't mind a shallow read, then you might enjoy it, but for those of you who want at least a little depth and significance to your reading, don't waste your time.

Prince Martris "Tris" Drayke of Margolan learns what hell really is when his brother, Jared, murders their entire family and seizes the throne. Tris barely escapes and flees with a handful of loyal colleagues. The shock triggers the awakening of memories that his grandmother, the legendary sorceress Bava K'aa, had sealed closed from his conscious mind. Tris has always been able to see and communicate with the ghosts of Margolan year round, even though others could only see them during the annual Feast of the Departed. However, Tris has no idea of the years Bava K'aa had spent training him on the use of his power; power he had no idea he could wield.

Jared's new ruling over Margolan is mainly through fear. To increase his land and power, he is forcing Princess Kiara Sharsequin of Isencroft to wed him. With the years of ruined crops and her father under some sort of wasting spell, Kiara fears she may not be able to stall the ceremony for much longer. After creating one last excuse, Kiara goes upon a Journey by the Sisterhood in hopes of finding a way to cure her father and save her people.

Foor Arontala, a Fireclan mage, is Jared's chief advisor and dark sorcerer. He may be helping Jared claim the throne, but Arontala has his own evil agenda. During the Mage Wars, the Obsidian King's soul had been banished into a Soulcatcher orb by Bava K'aa, due to the major threat he caused to Margolan and the Winter Kingdoms. Arontala intends to release the Obsidian King's soul from the Soulcatcher. But there is more to fear about Arontala than simply the fact that he is a powerful mage, much more.

Tris and his small group trek for a hidden place that may have the vital knowledge he seeks to help him understand and control his newly awakened power. As the group travels for a place that may not even exist, Tris must learn to call on a different set of allies: the ranks of the dead.

***** This is a THICK book, but I never grew bored, not once. Hand-to-hand combat, necromancy, goddesses, good and bad spirits, magical combat, betrayal... I cannot begin to describe all the different elements that the author, Gail Z. Martin, has spun together to create this outstanding tapestry. The book ends in, what I believe to be, the perfect place. When I finished reading the last page and closed the book, I sat for several minutes just thinking it all. I am in awe of this author's talents and have to wonder if she may be a sorceress herself. In a word, "PERFECT!" *****

Reviewed by Detra Fitch of Huntress Reviews.

I love adventure/fantasy books. I was absolutely fascinated with this story! Sure the story is typical good versus evil but with a new twist --a prince Necromancer! I kept thinking what a marvelous imagination Gail Martin has and I can't wait for the continuation.

The characters and plot work wonderfully together and I just took this book for what it was and just enjoyed it! I must admit it was slightly gory in some scenes but action packed through and through. I do agree with a review that the map was almost impossible to read but it didn't keep me from enjoying the book.

I loved this. The environment has a sense of history so that the places feel real, like we're seeing a moment in a long, developing narrative. The characters are strong, the objectives rational, their struggles believable. There are some really arresting (and unexpected) encounters which I thinkt he author will build on in future installments. As to whether it covers familiar fantasy ground as other reviewers suggest, sure, to an extent. But what fantasy doesn't? Read much Terry Brooks lately? In the swords and sorcery brand of fantasy descended in its modern form from Tolkien, there are certain conventions as there are in all genres. Martin's book is no exception, and certainly nowhere near as cliched as many. There's an intelligence and thoughtfulness here that will only get stronger as she writes more. I can't wait.

I consider myself fortunate to have stumbled upon The Summoner. Gail Martin -- a prominent newcomer in the realm of dark fantasy -- has dreamt a vivid universe filled with magnificent landscapes, omnipresent sinisterness, and lively, lifelike characters. The Summoner intertwines explicit realism with the unimaginable, all with an ease that builds eager anticipation for the next work Gail Martin's Summoner series. The Summoner is nothing short of engrossing, so expect it to consume the several days forward from the moment you pick it up. The Summoner is worth reading; then rereading, the only way to manage those cravings for Gail Martin's next.

This book was dreadful to read. Too many times I resisted the urge to hurl the book or just hand the curse off to someone sitting nearby on the bus while I read it. It suffered from far too many amateur mistakes (that I am guilty of myself I admit, but my work isn't published). There was a small handful of punctuation errors, but enough to stand out and more than I think should be allowed in a published piece of work. It tells me as the reader that she, the author, wouldn't even read it to check up on mistakes.

The story is extremely generic- don't be mislead by the cool cover or the cool concept of a necromancer main character. I picked the novel up after enjoying Tim Lebbon's "Dusk" and anticipated another well written, dark themed, fantasy "epic" adventure. Instead, I got Eragon. But worse because this one can't fall back on the whole "It was written by a 17 year old" thing. Indead, nothing about the book was epic at all. The main character, despite the cool lable of "summoner," is basically just a mage version of Sylvia Brown. The ending does more than leave you hanging- nothing happens! I admit I expected a big climactic battle at the end, as seemed to be the formula taht it was following, but pretty much nothing happens. Instead, they send the main character (who goes from a "I'm nothing special!" nobody to a over the top magic wielder- very original) in a tunnel that they suddenly made up, had him fight a quick predictable battle without explaining why very well, and then they just talk about nothing for a few more pages, leaving you wondering what the whole story was about in the first place.

My absolute biggest complaint about the way it was written is that the dialog is extremely chunky. There is no continuity or flow to the dialog, and I would grit my teeth during each and every conversation. Is it really neccisary to tell us that someone said something with a mouthful of jerky? It's a nice addition early on, but it realy breaks up the flow of conversation just tucked in the middle of dialog. But the big no-no is the "he/she added" tacked on before the last sentence of a character's dialog. I know it's added, they were just talking! Lastly, and this is more a pet pieve of mine, it was 100 pages before a character finally "said." 99 pages of "he coughed," "he sighed," "he grunted," "he mumbled." It got to the point I stopped even reading who was talking because I caught myself purposefully skipping how they said it. I don't care, and I don't care what they were eating when they said it.

Now if I sound hateful, I want to say that I have great respect for anyone who has written a book, much more so if they have gotten it published. That said, I'm just frustrated from having wasted so much time with so many repetitive problems. It had so much more potential (I wanted to see Tris be able to summon a skeletal/spiritual army to fight for him, but instead he's prohibited from doing so), but it never strayed from what I have read a thousand times already. The characters are uninteresting. Up until certain characters disappear about 2/3 through the book (which I felt like the author just wanted to stop writing about them), I never knew who was who or could remember their names aside from Tris. Several chapters start off without any dialog (which I found out later was a blessing) and by the time I had gotten into the meat of the story I knew nothing about the characters. They all just meshed together, but were intended to have distinct personalities. In other words, very poor character development.

I rant this long because I cannot recommend this book for anything more than the cool cover. My apologies to the writer, I don't loath the story as much as it seems. Had it been a few problems here and there I could have overlooked it, but it was the same, painful problems over and over again for 600 pages.

Great ideas, dissappointing follow-through. No character development. The only interesting relationship is between the main character and his sister in the part of the book I managed to drudge through, and the author kills the sister off. Unbelievable also. A dinner where pretty much everything is wrong and the main character's best friend who is a high ranking soldier, notices and he doesn't do anything about it? Lost interest for that character right away. And what's with the forture-teller right off the bat? I could go on but what a waste of time.

Gail Z Martin plunges into previously unthinkable depths of monotony and unfathomable stupidity as this book slogs on through chapter after chapter of gray, flavorless storytelling. Imagine Peewee's playhouse, except without anyone laughing. Oh wait, it's exactly like Peewee's playhouse.
There are several fundamental errors in syntax that are simply unbearable. First, Gail never sees fit to begin a new paragraph as the brainless mutterings of its characters shift from one mind-numblingly cliche character to the next, creating a veritable brick of conversation that is about as easy to digest as a tub of lard.
Second, the use of Deus ex machina is reserved for ancient Greek playwrights or writers of great literature. Not for some poor excuse for Days of Our Lives transposed into a vaguely fantastic setting. The intermittent appearances of the fabled "Lady" (who appears at set intervals to instantaneously set aright everything that the characters have managed to muck up in the last one-hundred pages) is both unbearable and confusing. The "Lady" apparently is also in possession of four "dark aspects" which have yet to make an appearance, but so far seem to be working in concert with the "light aspects." This causes the reader to ask, "what's the point?" frequently enough to discourage active reading, and encourage a good, old-fashioned book burning.
In closing, a murky plot, serendipitous salvations, and characters that are more bland than a stale bag of Munchos all work in concert to create the worst meltdown since Chernobyl. People who find this work enjoyable are probably part of the same group who went to see Titanic because they wondered how it ended.

There is a lack of polish, and definitely the run-on sentences and comma splices are distracting, but not necessarily the author's fault (no copy editor?).

The plot is formulaic, but interesting enough that it kept me reading until the end. It had the potential to be very good. However, I felt that it read a bit like a roleplaying game: Here is your mage, a prince on a quest. Here are your warriors, your rogue, your bard, your cleric.

When Kiara makes her first appearance, you get a nearly-MarySue description of her hair color, the length of the hair, the way her hair moves when released from its bonds, etc. Many of the characters were undeveloped, especially the villians. I did not feel I knew any more about the bad guys by the end of the book than at the beginning. Tris' companions were so secondary and shallow that at times I forgot their names and/or roles.

The vampire element was surprising. As in, it was a complete surprise how they popped up suddenly and unexpectedly.

The first half of the book does not seem so much Tris' adventure as it does completing quests for experience points in something like World of Warcraft. "Collect X amount of stones for a cairn and deliver a silver piece to the farm at the edge of town. Speak to the innkeeper for your reward!"

It struck me as being more on par with a very good fanfiction rather than a published novel. If there had been an already-established backstory, world, enemies, allies, and main characters, the minimalist descriptions and actions of the characters would have been acceptable. I felt the author could have fleshed it out into two or three more books.

I thought the book was great! It was exactly what I expected and wanted out of a fantasy novel. It was a fast read and kept me hooked from the beginning. I can't wait for the second novel to be released!

Over and over, this book kept surprising me with how many different formulaic elements were in it: The cruel prince, who with the help of his evil, undead wizard, murders almost his entire family and sets up a tyranical rule,the unambitious younger brother with a hidden talent for magic who escapes, vowing to return and overthrow them both, a warrior princess from the kingdom next door who is fleeing an arranged marriage to the older brother, who joins up with the younger brother, a mystical enchanted sword the younger prince must win from a dead guardian, a mysterious 'sisterhood' that shows up with magic or advice when it's needed, and a goddess who pops in for a miracle or two, the hardened mercenary who is supposedly very cynical and cares only for himself, but who has had his life ruined twice by the same evil wizard who the protagonist needs to defeat. Oh, and yet another princess in disguise, who they rescue from evil slavers. And the hero is a mage, too, as well as a necromancer, so he can go tossing firebolts if need be. And the dialog was just sad. I kept thinking, this is what you get when you have a writer who doesn't read, but who watches bad fantasy movies.

Over and over, this book kept surprising me with how many different formulaic elements were in it: The cruel prince, who with the help of his evil, undead wizard, murders almost his entire family and sets up a tyranical rule,the unambitious younger brother with a hidden talent for magic who escapes, vowing to return and overthrow them both, a warrior princess from the kingdom next door who is fleeing an arranged marriage to the older brother, who joins up with the younger brother, a mystical enchanted sword the younger prince must win from a dead guardian, a mysterious 'sisterhood' that shows up with magic or advice when it's needed, and a goddess who pops in for a miracle or two, the hardened mercenary who is supposedly very cynical and cares only for himself, but who has had his life ruined twice by the same evil wizard who the protagonist needs to defeat. Oh, and yet another princess in disguise, who they rescue from evil slavers. And the hero is a mage, too, as well as a necromancer, so he can go tossing firebolts if need be. And the dialog was just sad. I kept thinking, this is what you get when you have a writer who doesn't read, but who watches bad fantasy movies.

This book is terrible. I seriously question how Gail Martin got published. Perhaps the worst fantasy book I've ever read... I obviously did not read the entire book but the 100 or so pages I did read left me angry and I felt like my money had been stolen.