This is an excellent novel, very enjoyable. The story might have been a bit predictable but the climax was delivered well and the characters were true throughout the entire book.

Bodies start to turn up in the small town of Rio Verde. Bodies that are drained of all their fluids. Relatively quickly people conclude that it is a vampire but the evil starts to influence the town people and worse things begin to happen.

While the big evil in this book is a vampire, it's not really a vampire book. More of a "something evil haunting a small city" book. As the title alludes, the book focuses more on the evil being summoned up in the towns people than to the source of the evil. In fact, the evil being a vampire is almost inconsequential since it could have been almost anything. The book does have another twist to the vampire lore though: the American legends are actually twisted information from Chinese folk lore and not everything works the same. So crosses and holy water don't work while sunlight still does. It might sound a bit contrived here but it works very well. Read it and see. ( )

Very creepy book. Reminded me why I don't go to church. ( )

Haven't actually finished it yet, but am very impressed. This is the first Bentley Little book I've read, and am very impressed. ( )

This book presents a unique approach to the vampire story by incorporating Chinese folklore. And as a bonus, it isn’t a romantic vampire story. This vampire is evil. However, the most compelling piece of the story may be the blind religious fanaticism that is explored which may be the scariest part of the book.

Parts of the story drag on, and given the length of the book, could have been streamlined for a faster read. Or, taking another direction, some of the subplots could have been fleshed out to provide more suspense. But given this is one of the author’s earlier works, that can be forgiven as you get the quality of Bentley Little’s writing and imagination. ( )

On the surface, The Summoning is a vampire story, and a pretty good one, at that. In a small Arizona town, bodies start showing up - completely dessicated bodies. And it becomes pretty clear pretty quick that there's a monster on the prowl. But Bentley Little does us a real favor by rethinking the classic vampire and presenting us with a monster that's well beyond Dracula or his descendants. This is an ancient evil that doesn't obey the usual rules.

But there's more to the story than just a good monster hunt. Little touches on blind religious thinking and the ways that the essence of a person - whether good or bad - are brought to the fore by events.

Little keeps the action moving with a crisp plot, and I liked the way his characters respond to some very abnormal experiences. All in all, it was a fun read that I'll recommend. ( )