I read S. T. Gibson’s A Dowry of Blood — a retelling of Dracula from the point of view of one of his brides — earlier this year and absolutely adored it. The writing was beautiful, the characters were interesting, and I loved the general vibe (it was giving the vampire flashback scenes from Buffy and Angel, without the terrible accents). Her latest novel, Evocation, the first in a planned series (The Summoner’s Circle), was recently released, so I picked it up.
Evocation follows David Aristarkhov, a psychic who begins experiencing symptoms of a magical curse. The only person he believes can help him is his ex-boyfriend, Rhys. Rhys and his wife, Moira, are avoiding David due to an incident prior to the start of the novel, so there’s a bunch of relationship drama to address before he can ask for their help.
Honestly, this book was a huge disappointment. I had tempered expectations going in – I didn’t expect to love this as much as A Dowry of Blood, but I also didn’t expect to actively hate it (and if it wasn’t such a short book, I likely wouldn’t have finished it).
The writing felt like it was written by a different person. The characters were one dimensional and insufferable (David is mean and has daddy issues! Moira is nice and sees dead people! Rhys likes books and is horny!) Most of the book is taken up with the navigation of a polyamorous relationship between the characters, but they had almost zero chemistry and the dialogue was super clunky, so I wasn’t at all invested. The actual curse plot was so boring (they spend time in a library and read about it in books).
I have no desire at this point to continue the series, and wouldn’t really recommend it to anyone.