Published by Pinnacle
Books
(1993)
ISBN: 0-7860-1480-6
Review
by Ty Schwamberger
Bram Stoker Award Winning
author, Bentley Little, manages to scare you to wits
end, again, with his novel, The
Summoning. This novel has quite a
few characters in it, some that make memorable one-time appearances, while a
few are followed throughout the entire story.
Corpses of all kinds,
human and animal, are popping up all over town in this ‘modern day’ vampire
story. The grisly part is that these
bodies are found not just bitten on the neck and drained of their blood but all
their bodily fluids. It is up to a local
newspaper reporter, his brother the police Chief, a Chinese girl and her
elderly grandmother, the coroner and a few other minor characters, to find out
who or what is killing people and animals alike, and how to go about stopping
it. The group follows the somewhat
psychic powers of the two Chinese women to locate where the vampire is sleeping
and kill him. The only problem is; that
traditional methods of a stake through the heart, holy water and garlic have no
effect on this ancient monster.
They must use Chinese
techniques and folklore, instead.
At the beginning of the
story the townspeople don’t want to believe they have a vampire of all things
running loose in their town and taking out their loved ones, but when the body
counts increase and people start to flee the small town, they start to listen
to the Chinese women and end up protecting themselves with their wisdom.
The search and battle
that ensues is a somewhat Biblical one, that leads the chosen ones to where the
monster hides during daylight hours and they have to use their newly acquired
knowledge of modern day vampires to hunt and kill him.
I found this novel to
have great characters and a storyline, but at times seemed forced and a little
too drawn out. A hundred pages could
have been cut from this book and it still would have been a good read. Though, this could or could not explain why Little is a self-proclaimed ‘pupil of the Stephen King way
of storytelling’.
Overall I would rate this
book 3 out of 5 stars.