Reads like bad fanfic.When I read the summary for this, I was intrigued by a premise that had previously been used by Modesitt in "The Soprano Sorceress," bringing a woman from our world into a magical one where she suddenly finds herself in possession of great power. Unfortunately, Ms. Owens is no Modesitt. I strongly suspect that she's a former, or current, fanfic writer and this book is one of her recycled fics that she "cleaned up" for professional publication. It certainly reads like it, starting out mediocre and rapidly spiraling downward into badfic land.Again, the premise is promising and I was looking forward to seeing a different author's take on it. The opening, while not great (far too much telling the reader what Thealia is feeling instead of showing it, not letting readers get any feel for it themselves), was catchy. A mysterious land with a mysterious problem that needs a mysterious savior. I can go with that. It could've been laid out far better, more exposition and description and less spoon-feeding of facts and anvil-over-the-head, "This is a Bad Guy," but it was still readable.The second part of the first chapter, the introduction of Alexa, our main protagonist, while still readable, was even weaker. Her motivations are understandable, as is her circumstances and grief, but I couldn't feel them. They're just laid out, stated baldly, and no emotional connection is made. I found her remote and her grief unapproachable; I couldn't empathize with her because there'd been no good description, nothing to draw me in. Everything about her past was one huge info-dump of emotionless information. Facts, facts, and more facts, and much of it telling me how she feels and therefore (presumably), how I should feel. Note to author: doesn't work like that. Give me a reason, some character exploration, some build-up, something other than a big mess of facts randomly interspersed with sketchy mentions of Alexa reacting to her info-dump memories. But that's all we're given, and no emotional connection is made.And why is she up in the mountains at night, following auditory hallucinations? She passes it off as an aspect of mourning, grief, unable to explain it to herself. Well, that's a pretty bad explanation for the reader, too. Maybe the chimes and gongs and singing really were that compelling, but you wouldn't know it from the description. None of it felt at all compelling to me. There was no sense of urgency or need there, despite being told over and over that it was, no sense of what drove Alexa out into the dark and dangerous wilds of the mountains against all common sense, and that just makes her look like an idiot instead of a sympathetic heroine.That's a complaint I keep coming back to with this author's writing; I can't feel anything from it. The descriptions are dry and factual, and I felt like the author was beating me about the head with those facts, hoping I'd accept them that way instead of troubling herself to use any description.All of this I might have been able to accept. I've certainly read worse. If it'd stayed only this mediocre, I probably would've finished the book and just not bothered reading any others in the series. But then Alexa was pulled into Thealia's world and the true badness commenced.Oh, for the love of Strunk & White! Ms. Owens, get thee to a writing class!If you must use more than one point of view in one scene (and really, why must you?), you do not change them out constantly to where the reader feels like they're watching a point of view ping-pong match.I can't imagine a worse way the "tests" Alexa goes through could have been written. It's like reading a grocery list. First A happens, and Alexa reacts like B, and then C happens and Alexa reacts like D, and then E happens, and so forth. It's so unbelievably dry and factual and methodical. Absolutely nothing there in the way of description to engage the reader in either the events or the emotions they engender. It's supposed to be shocking and exciting, instead it's dull and formulaic.The last straw for me came when Alexa started deducing and deciding things about these new people around her, based not on any facts that we're ever made aware of, but on...well, we're not made aware of any reason for this, actually, just that she does. For instance, this sentence:"The big man wearing rust red turned to the angular woman - Alexa had decided they were the most important two."She decided how? Based on what evidence? That's never explained, and this is something she continues to do, jump to completely illogical decisions and come to equally illogical conclusions. (Or, they may well be very logical, but we'd need this thing we call "exposition" coupled with the ever-popular "description" to help us see the logic.) This is a perfect example of lazy writing. The author is simply telling the reader something instead of working to support the conclusions Alexa comes to via fleshing out the narrative.The worst of these conclusions, the one that demonstrates how much the author needs to take a few classes on writing and perhaps even get a new editor, is this:"[The woman] wore a robe of dark red, with a coat of arms over her left breast, but in the center of her chest was a big white cross. Not hard to deduce that she was a doctor."I was left speechless for a few moments after reading this.Speechlessness quickly gave way to snark and eye rolling, however. Who, other than a complete imbecile, upon finding themselves in a different world (a different planet, even), would presume that their societal, cultural and dress rules would be the same as our world's? In our culture, a white cross can mean Christianity or a medic or both. In this world, what's to say it doesn't mean, "I sacrifice babies at midnight over a medium flame with a mild garlic sauce?" There is no way to know. Not from Alexa's perspective. So how she came to this conclusion is either an example of her stupidity or the author's inability to form a coherent narrative. Since I doubt Alexa was meant to come off as a moron, I tend towards the latter explanation.I read through page 24 of this crime against good narration before giving up in utter disgust. I later scanned a few more chapters to make sure it didn't abruptly improve somewhere along the way and turn into a decent story. It didn't and it doesn't.Save your money. There are far more interesting fantasy books out there (I'm not overly fond of Modesitt's style of narrative, but that's just a personal choice and he's a good starting point for this particular brand of fantasy). It'd be free to get this from the library, but unless it's the only book left in the sci-fi/fantasy section, I wouldn't bother with doing that, either. Move along, dear reader, there is definitely nothing worth seeing here.
This book was surprisingly nice. Ok, it's nothing earth shattering, and perhaps because of that 4 stars are too much. On the other hand, I really enjoyed it and I'm going to let that count for more than how good the book is. The story is about Alexa, who gets Summoned to another world. There she finds she has magic and is needed to fight evil. She also finds her soulmate. As you can see, a simple story, nice and unpretentious. It has fantasy, it had romance, and, what I really liked, it is unprejudiced. The highest magic-users, the Marshalls, form up in Pairs, and these Pairs are not necessarily same-sex pairs. One of them is the Shield, and one the Sword, for defensive and offensive fighting. Alexa turns out to be the Sword and her lover to be the Shield. There is some mention about how it is usually the woman who is the Shield, but it is minimal, and most of the comments are made by the most reprehensible person in the book. Although Mr. Soulmate makes some stupid mistakes, the amount of misunderstandings are kept to a minimum, and in the end they have a true partnership. I'm looking forward to the next installment in this series!
Do You like book Guardian Of Honor (2005)?
I absolutely LOVE this series! Its very original and written so well! It seems very realistic and the situations the characters get involved in seem plausible (within the story line) It is a fantasy fiction where on woman from Colorado is brought into another dimension by the inhabitance of this alternate realm to help save them from an evil being. This evil being is sending creatures through the rain and past the failing protective barrier to attack and kill. This first book is full of internal conflict, some romance, and fighting to stay alive. I really recommend this book and series to anyone who wants something new and original and entertaining!
—Brittany
I couldnt put this book down and then I 'devoured' the rest of the series. I loved the world that Ms Owens created and the romance and the adventure and the 'happy ever after' My husband hasnt seen much of me this past few weeks I have been reading 'The Summoning Series'I think Robin Owens did a marvellous job with these books, the romance scenes were really engrossing, the story and adventure exciting. I really recommend this to other fans of romantic fantasy.(Just an add in, the romance scenes are romantic and not overly explicit, thank goodness as too many romance writers these days make the book all about explicit sex scenes and not enough about good story)
—Cell1e
Good lord I hated this book so much.UPDATE:So I wrote my one line "review" back in June, and now that it's the end of August I'm prepared to write more about it. I bought this book at least in 2008 (I found a ticket stub for a concert in that year as bookmark). I picked up at least three times and put it down, unwilling to put in the effort of reading it. I remember back when I WAS reading it after buying it initially, a friend of mine was also reading the series. She told me that while this book wasn't very good, the subsequent books got better. However, I really, really hated this book so I won't be reading any more volumes even if they are 500% better. A lot of my problems with this book are centered on the abysmal prose. It reads like something I might have written in my teens, with perhaps the tiniest bit more polish (not much, some of the descriptions made me cringe hard-core, especially when Alexa was first transported to Lladrana). It took me several months to slog through this book. It shouldn't have if it was written in a more engaging style, with a better plot. I actually started it at the end of 2012 and finished it in June of 2013. To me, it read more like a detailed, padded outline than a real, rounded work. There is a remarkable amount of telling instead of showing, and considering Alexa doesn't even speak the language for so long, that's pretty cringe-worthy. I didn't like Alexa, or Bastien or whatever his name was. I don't remember most of the story because it flitted out of my head as soon as it entered. I don't require 100% originality in my stories; that would be impossible. But this is so standard and uninspired that it really didn't click with me. I understand what the author was trying to do with this story, but I don't think she managed to pull it off.I realize this is a very harsh review, but for something so dull, it managed to inspire a really strong reaction from me. I honestly didn't care at ALL about the fate of Lladrana, or any of the characters themselves (and there was a total contrivance between the love interests that made me want to bang my head against the wall. I LOATHE "Big Misunderstanding" plot devices).So, to make a long story short (too late!) I refer back to my original review:Good Lord I hated this book so much.
—Catherine
