This is definitely an interesting series. To start things off, the series starts as a story of revenge. And generally with a lot of revenge stories that are in movies, tv shows and books; which tend to be really focused on beating the bad guy not because they are bad and evil but because they did something to me. And this is how it starts. But what I really like is that Tris, the main character, starts to see that by trying to make this all about him when there is definitely a bigger picture that it will do much more harm than good. There is one touching moment where Tris is training with Carina and the witch which is kind of crazy and she poses this question to him. Tris breaks down with the realization that he needs to let go of the revenge aspect and become something greater. She also meant business because if he had not let go, she would have killed him right there because seeking power for revenge is definitely a good way to start the path to evil and darkness.
The religion of the Winter Kingdoms (sort of brings to mind Winterfell >.>) is one that I really find rather appealing. The idea is that there is the One Goddess, which is very nice change away from there being a god instead, and that she has many aspects. Each kingdom sort of reveres the different aspects of her as it fits the way that they as a people live and worship. There are eight different aspects: Chenne the warrior, The Lover, the Whore, the Crone, the Childe, the Dark Lady, and the Mother are the ones that are worshiped the most. What is very appealing to this is that everyone recognizes that these aspects are of the same goddess, which outside of exterminating a cult that is secretly probably still worshiped in Nargi it takes the religious motivation for some wars out of the equation. It makes it much more apparent that wars between countries really comes down to either selfish rulers or in this specific case the aim to remove a tyrant.
The characters that stand out the most in this series and specifically the first book are Tris, Kiara, Carina and Vahanian. I believe that is mainly because they have pretty much a bigger back story versus the others. Who, do not get me wrong, make very nice support characters, but pretty much only that.
There is not much wasted on the description of areas, which essentially means that there is description enough to get you started on using your imagination. Which can be both good and bad. Good in the sense that you can imagine a given area more to your tastes of how you think it should be. But bad because it doesn't show you exactly how the author imagined it
The basic story line that is shown you by the end of book one is that all roads lead to getting Jared and Foor Arantola gone for good. And with no surprise there is a very short time limit in the long scheme of things. Sort of in the sense of Avatar the Last Airbender where Aang needs to master everything by the time of the comet. Tris similarly has to master this amazing Summoner/Good Necromatic power that he has inherited from his grandmother the famous Bava K'aa in order to destroy Foor Arantola and the Obsidian King once and for all.
Switching gears I am generally not a fan of stories with vampires and werewolves. Out of all my books, there are only 3 series that have vampires (one of them really doesn't count because they are more like mecha vampires, but still...). It has never struck me as very interesting, and so I have to be pretty impressed with either how they are handled or the story line in general to stick with a book with vampires. In the Summoner there are vampires, which go by the name vayash moru. Personally, I think that is a much cooler name then 'vampire' but that is my opinion. I believe that the only reason I do not get put off by them (outside of the cool name rebranding) is specifically the two main vayash morus; Gabriel and Mikhail. As the series goes on, they make the whole vampire aspect in this book okay.
This book specifically is a relatively fast read, and a good one at that. It is one of those books for me where the story is good...but easily outshined by other books I own...but is one where I come back to because of specific characters I feel like reading about. I have books that I keep because the story blows me away, both the story and characters blow me away, or the characters are the kind that I like to revisit now and again. And the whole series for the Chronicles of the Necromancer is one where the characters are what keeps me coming back.
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