Customer Reviews

Long Hot Summoning

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

otherwise a whole lot less. I thought that SUMMON THE KEEPER was one of the funniest, most original books I had ever read, I enjoyed the sequel, THE SECOND SUMMONING, although, like many sequels, it was not quite as good as the first. This third entry into the series has much of the off-the-wall humor of the first two but just isn't as good as the earlier books.

The action picks up a few weeks after THE SECOND SUMMONING, Claire and Dean (and Austin) are back at the Elysian Fields Guest House while younger sister Diana is finishing her last few hours of high school. Her first summoning arrives immediately after the last bell rings and takes her to a mall. It sems as though the mundane and magical worlds are overlapping here and need to be separated. Claire also arrives at the mall, the two set out to sort out the mess, meeting King Arthur along the way. Meanwhile back at the guest house Dean and Austin are dealing with their own problems.

The action is split among the two sisters and Dean which gives the book a lot of plot to deal with, maybe too much. At times it is difficult to keep the various threads straight, particularly between Claire and Diana.

If there is another in the series I hope that it returns to the standards of the first book. It is possible that this is the end of the series, and if so it was fun while it lasted. In any case, if you have read and enjoyed the first books by all means read this one. If the series sounds interesting to you start with SUMMON THE KEEPER. I will be looking for additional books by this author either in this series or one of her others.

Don't take me wrong. It's not a bad book. It's certainly worth reading if you really enjoyed the first two, but..... Maybe it's the lack of novelty. The book lacks a certain *something*

The first book was charming in its novelty. The cutting insight of Austin....Hell talking to itself...It felt fresh and fascinating. In The Long Hot Summoning, the narrative seemed more forced, less natural.

Unfortunately for fans of the series, Tanya said publicly at a conference that it is likely this is the last of The Keeper books. This makes me sad since this book is not of the same quality as the first two.

LONG HOT SUMMONING is # 3 in the Keeper's Chronicles series and while I won't go so far as to say it is a letdown it certainly doesn't have the same oomph as the first two. The humor is still there, but it just doesn't have the same bite or spontaneity we found in its predecessors.

The characters seem to be taking a bit of a sabbatical here unlike SUMMON THE KEEPER and especially THE SECOND SUMMONING. The story focuses more on Diana, now a full fledged Keeper and on her first real assignment, and while she plays well as supporting foil for her sister Claire she doesn't have the interesting character quirks needed as the main protagonist. Sure she's a bundle of unpredictable hormonal insanity, but she's a teenager, that's not fiction that's real life! Her budding romance with a mall elf comes off more as teenage lust and experimentation than the love/fear/lust/need/lust/companionship/lust...well you get the picture, relationship that has developed between Dean and Claire. Also Diana's angel turned cat Sam just doesn't have the same cat-like qualities that dear old Austin has, nor does he have his razor sharp sense of humor. I was also disappointed to find that Hell, one of the funniest characters ever created, has only a cameo role and just isn't his old schizoid self.

However it's not bad and there are some really interesting parts although one of the best is really a subplot centering around the male bonding between Dean and Austin, ok a neuter/wuss bonding, but it's good none the less. We even get to see Dean move past his boy toy/Felix Unger persona into a true support base for his Keeper mate. The gender role reversal that so helped the romance/friction of the first two volumes is still there and doesn't seem to be adversely impacted by this change.

Good but not great, still I RECOMMEND it and will be looking forward to future episodes.

Most of this story deals with the adventures of the younger sister from the first two "Summon" novels. Diverting, but the dialog is somewhat predictable and shallow, compared to the first two. I think if she writes a 4th "Summon" novel, this will improve.

I loved the first 2 books. I loved only part of one sub-plot of this book- Dean, Austin and the mummy, and that isn't enough to love the whole book. Claire's ok in parts, but I didn't really see why she had to do the beach thing and the Egyptian otherworld thing. Lance was over-done and I didn't catch the Australian jokes.

I didn't mind the lesbian thingy - at least I understood that part. Most of the time I just couldn't figure out what was going on, especially since Sam and Austin were separated from Claire and Diana so there were 5 threads to follow, none of which seemed to converge much.

Things made a twisted kind of sense in the 1st 2 books, maybe because the plots were simpler. Some of those rules are also found in this book, but somehow I couldn't follow out how the mall(s) worked in this story.

And while it's Diana's story, she doesn't come across as the heroine. I was hoping that Diana would find her feet as a keeper. She still comes across as a nasty immature and (sigh) impotent person. I need heroines I can like.

Ms Huff is definitely capable of better. I'd buy the next book in the series if it's about Claire. Even if it's a better Diana in a sequel, I shudder to think of wading through all that teen-speak. It's hard enough to follow as it is, and it'll only become dated.

The focus shifts in this book to Clare's younger sister Diana. Maybe it's just this shift away from Clare and Dean (DEAN!) but I didn't enjoy this one as much as the first two, which I adored.

Here's hoping #4 has some fresh ideas and more Clare and Dean!

I have greatly enjoyed all of the Keeper novels by Tanya Huff. Oddly enough, these have turned out to be great read-aloud books for long trips (I know, I shouldn't be doing something that distracts the driver, but my DH does most of the driving and I enjoy reading aloud). Although I found this book perhaps a bit slower going than the first two, I was glad to see more of Diana, the younger sister and most powerful Keeper and was also pleased that the Angel who became a Cat was an important secondary character in this book.
Ms. Huff has managed to work in once again all sorts of mythic archetypes (Arthur) plus lots of good fun, bad puns, and bits of horror including some classic stuff (ancient Egyptian mummies who come back to life by...well read it and find out).
I do have to confess that I am still trying to puzzle out just what minivans have to do with Evil, but it's good fun (I'm a bit worried: we drive a 94 white Nissan Quest minivan. Does this mean we're allied with the Bad Guys?)

Huff managed to take the story and spin it around while holding your interst. She changes main charaters without losing anything. That I apprecaiate. Some autors can only keep one charater with a preticular world or storyline. Huff does not lose it by switching around.

The books are fun, the charaters have to deal with a lot, and they deal well. This one is a story of learning that jobs can be a lot harder then they see, and arrogance tastes cold later. Duty and honor are crunched into a funfilled fantastic fast paced ride.

In this third installment of the Keeper's Chronicles, the story focuses on the newest and strongest Keeper, Diana, Claire's little sis. Although the story drags a bit and the plot is a little corney, the story still contains the dry sense of humor that is well known to this series. What really keeps the story going is Austin, the cat. His charater is a trip.

Basically, Diana get's her first summons one minute after finishing high school and is sent to the local mall in Claire's town. So why didn't Claire get the summoning? Apparently because there was need for the strongest Keeper (which would now be Diana--since she is the youngest). Diana does ask for Claire's help and what they find in the Otherside are elves, Arthur, and shadow monsters. Not to mention a dirty old man. Oh, and Diana falls in love.

"Long Hot Summoning" is a very unusual humorous fantasy. It's not like the other two in Ms. Huff's universe, in that it focuses more on Diana, Claire's lesbian sister, and her tangled attempts to have a meaningful relationship.

In the second book, "The Second Summoning," Diana ended up making friends with Sam, a literally fallen angel (who decided to be immediately reincarnated as a cat). This was probably the first friend she'd ever made, as she was too powerful for her own good from an early age, and had no compunctions about using her powers to suit herself. Her parents rather despaired of her; her sister didn't know what to think, half the time approving, half of the other time being appalled.

In this installment of "The Keeper's Chronicles," Diana has finally graduated high school, meaning she can now be summoned to do Keeper work. As she's the most powerful Keeper in the world, she's more than ready to do the work, too.

Or is she? She gets out to the latest incident, a mall looking for a place to implode/explode (Huff calls it a gateway, I think, although I could be misremembering the terminology), and takes her sister with her. Dean, Claire's boyfriend, and Austin, Claire's cat, can't go with her (although Austin tries, but ends up getting sent back home). So it's just Diana and Claire, trying to do their best to keep the mall from becoming a gateway to Hell.

Do they succeed? Well, that's up to you to decide.

As for everything else, I'm a bit split on how I feel regarding Diana's romance with the punkish transformed human Kris. Kris is bright, feisty, and attractive, but what else is pulling at Diana to make Kris be the one she fixates on? This really isn't shown, although Diana's confusion as to whether or not it's actually OK for her to kiss Kris is done to perfection by Ms. Huff.

And as a few others have pointed out, Claire seems a bit like an afterthought for most of the book. And that's wrong; Claire, Dean and Austin are the backbone of this series, and easing them out is the wrong move in my opinion. I sincerely hope Ms. Huff doesn't do that.

I'd definitely recommend this book, to anyone over fifteen that likes humorous fantasy laced with satire and sarcasm. There is a remarkable amount of strong language here, more so than in the other books of this series, and between that and the necrophilia hinted at in the relationship between the mummy and the professor, I'd rather err on the side of caution in recommending this book to anyone under fifteen (or an extremely mature kid of any age, with parental supervision).

As for future adventures, I'd definitely buy them. Bring 'em on as fast as possible, Ms. Huff!