Customer Reviews

Long Hot Summoning: The Keeper's Chronicles #3

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I enjoyed the previous 2 books in this series, however I would have to say that this installment has been a distinct disappointment for me. The focus of the novels have now shifted to Claire's younger (and most powerful of the keepers as we are constantly reminded) gay sister Diana. Claire is still part of the story, but more of a sub plot, with Dean and Austin as a back story to the save-the-world-from-the-mall main storyline.

Huff has tried to split the story between the two sisters, and in the process you feel like the novel lacks focus. A great deal of time is spent crawling around the mall trying to work out what is wrong and with a rather heavy handed "romance" developing between Diana and Kris, one of the street-people-turned elves inhabiting the mall. The whole Diana romance subplot seemed rather a waste in many ways as you never really do get to know much about Kris aside from the fact that Diana is attracted to her and in now way does it compare to the Dean/Claire storyline of the previous books.

I'm sorry to say, that if this series continues to focus on Diana I'll probably drift away from it. As a character I like her much less than Claire, and in this particular novel I found the sub-story of Dean/Austin and the Mummy more interesting than what was happening at the mall, and Diana's constant little sister put downs of Claire didn't help me make like her any more as a person.

For a novel that tries desperately to be witty and fast moving and contemporary I would have to say that the cats and Hell probably are the funniest bits of the story and this is the weakest installment in the Keepers series so far.

So, what do you do when you're a Keeper who is just graduating High School? You're one of a valiant few who can alter reality and make sure that the various other worlds don't intrude on Earth too much. You keep mystical forces in balance. You have a talking former-angel, now-feline sidekick, and the whole world is opening up for you.

Well, you go save the world, of course. But when you're a young lesbian Keeper and the Otherside has decided to take an entire suburban mall and cram it full of evil, things might get a little out of control. Especially with the forces of good being made up mostly of runaway street teens who are turning into Mall-Elves, and being led by an Archetypal King Arthur (with boy-band looks and a leather ensemble). Definitely bring the cat.

This is the third in the "Keeper" series by Tanya Huff, and it's a blast. Diana, the heroine, just blasts out contemporary sarcasm throughout the tale, and as usual, the humour and punny nature of Evil is just a joy to read. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll wish you too could find a saucy leather-clad Mall Elf.

'Nathan

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.

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.

Long Hot Summoning (2003) is the third novel in the Keeper's Chronicles series, following The Second Summoning. The Keepers maintain the balance between good and evil. Their primary tool is possibility itself. Their task is to repair breaches between the Realities, such as here and Hell, as well as between the Realities and the Otherside, a universe of unresolved possibilities. Their companions are cats.

In this novel, Diana is attending her last day of high school when she discovers an anomalous bracelet, with the feel of the Otherside, on the wrist of a female jock. She learns that the bracelet has come from Erlking's Emporium in the Kingston mall. She and Sam, former angel turned cat, investigate and find the store managed by a Troll and full of Otherside items, including a pink magic wand. Moreover, Diana meets a magic mirror, Jack, who tells her that the mall is becoming a segue, an area accessible to more than one Reality. Jack really wants to get away from his owners and Diana promises to take him away ASAP.

Recognizing that the task is more than she can handle alone, Diana calls upon her sister, Claire, whom she finds kissing the boyfriend, Dean. After Diana gains their attention, Claire, Dean, and Claire's cat, Austin, discuss the situation and decide on their tactics. The next morning, Diana, Sam, Claire, and Austin try to sneak through the Erlking's Emporium into the Otherside; everybody but Austin makes it into a very similar, but distorted, mall. There they find Elves and the Immortal King.

Austin, whose path to the Otherside has been rejected by the possibilities, sneaks out to Dean in the parking lot of the Realside mall and they return to the Elysian Fields Guest House. Since time doesn't run the same on the Otherside, they don't even know how long they will have to wait for the others to return, so they carry on as usual. After the midget basketball team, nine dwarfs and a pale female manager, checks out, a Professor of Archaeology shows up with his Mummy and requests a room with a dehumidifier. Then Austin finds a dead mouse in that room.

This novel has much the same irreverent feel as Asprin's Myth series. Diana, however, reminds one more of Dairine in Duane's Young Wizards series, full of energy and power, with a gung-ho attitude. The cats are much like those in Duane's Book of Night with Moon/To Visit the Queen duology. The plot is reminiscent of Cook's Mall Purchase Night and Lisle's Mall, Mayhem and Magic. Despite the various similarities, the author has produced a book that is uniquely hers while being just as enjoyable as these other works. Definitely a keeper (sorry, couldn't resist).

Highly recommended to Huff fans, to the fans of Robert Asprin, Diane Duane, Rick Cook, and Holly Lisle, and to anyone who enjoys light fantasy with a cheeky attitude.

-Arthur W. Jordin

Teenage mall elves. Minivans as tangible evidence of evil. Scented candles are assault weapons - as are tote bags.

This book is slightly more about Diana than about Claire. Diana and Claire have to share Sam, as Austin gets left behind with Dean. There's also a mummy and an absent-minded professor, an over-enthusiastic grad student, an anime-hero reincarnation of King Arthur, and the third-floor elevator that opens onto the beach. (No giant not-a-squids actually show up, however.) Hell is as sarcastic as ever.

If you didn't understand the above references, you probably haven't read the first two books in the series. I would recommend buying them and reading them all in order. Some in-jokes will go right by you if you don't. If you prefer your fantasy solemn and serious, and your elves with long unpronounceable names and bows-and-arrows, this may not be your kind of book- the whole series has a sense of humor, as do Huff's other books. While we do have quests to save the world, the characters are not terribly solemn about it all.

Keepers have powers that help keep the balance in the world between good and evil; normal people (muggles, I suppose) are Bystanders. In the first book, Claire, a Keeper, meets Dean, a Bystander. By the end of the second book, Claire and Dean have inherited a hotel, and Claire's younger sister, Diana, is revealed to have greater Keeper powers than Claire or either of their parents. So for this third book, Diana and Claire team up on a mission. Sam and Austin are their respective cats. The plot itself is the usual - a gate of some sort between Hell and this world is getting larger and strange things are getting through, to generalize the plots of all three books. In this case, the location is a shopping mall.

It's a fun, reasonably fast read, with a few new twists to liven up its universe. So far, Huff is proving that she can handle that generalized plot line over and over again without boring an audience!

What does this book have? A collection of story sub-plots that are not carried through to completion, it is almost as if Tanya Huff could not figure out where to take this book and kept throwing things at it hoping something would work...

Sub-Plot 1: Ultimate Evil is transforming a Mall into a new Gateway to Conquer Earth... Sorry, they did that in the first book in the series...

Sub-Plot 2: This book introduces Diana, the younger sister, as the "up and coming heroine" that the next book(s) will be centered about. If you like teenage angst, and unbridled arrogance -- she is your "gal"... Imagine a teen-ager that has no compunctions whatever about using the Jedi Mind Control Trick on anyone she meets... and this is the "Heroine" !?!

Sub-Plot 3: The abandoned children are trapped in a Faery extension of the Mall are being turned into Punk Elves... They need "help" against Ultimate Evil (trademark) so they instinctively summon an analog "King Arthur" -- except this is a young male and very pastel version of the historical/mythic Arthur.

Sub-Plot 4: And Diana has to be aggressively "in-your-face" about hitting on a _female_ punk elf.

Sub-Plot 5: A lukewarm fight between a female Mummy and...

If the book had more focus it would have been a good read. I was scanning it towards the end just to see how the author would finish it...

There are better, much better!, books out there: Lois M. Bujold's "Curse of Chalion", Carol Berg's "Song of the Beast", Wen Spencer's "Alien Taste", and Emma Bull's "Battle Of the Oaks".

"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!

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.

Keepers are those of the Lineage who maintain the metaphysical balance of the world. Now that Diana Hansen has graduated high school she is no longer kept in reserve but is a full-fledged Keeper. She notices a bracelet a student is wearing is tainted by evil and learns that it was bought at a store in the Kingston, Ontario Mall. Realizing that the forces of darkness have almost taken over the mall, Diane gets her sister Claire, powerful in her own right, to help her in her first Summoning.

They cross over from the mall to the Otherside where an identical mall is segueing into the one on the mortal plane. There they find allies in Arthur and his elves (street children who have found their way into the Otherside and have changed into another life form). There they prepare to do battle with the evil being known as the Shadowlord, a fight they must win if Earth is to survive.

LONG HOT SUMMONING is a delightful and charming urban fantasy that is both funny and exciting. The plot is so fast-paced that readers find a need to see what happens next. The secondary cast is whimsical creatures that include a magic mirror and a cat that used to be an angel. They play a small but pivotal role in the story line, leaving readers feeling as if they were participants in an adult fairy tale.

Harriet Klausner