Echoes in the Dark
Summoning Series, Book 5

Robin D. Owens

Publisher:
Luna

Release Date:
January 2009

Genres:
Fantasy
Paranormal Romance

ISBN:
Print
9780373802937
Kindle
No ISBN

Bookmark Rating:

Reviewed by
Kenzi

Review Posted:
March 2009

And evil has spread throughout the planet Amee and is slowly sucking the life from her. The people of Lladrana have brought five outsiders – Exotiques – to their land to help fight the evil. But they need a sixth, a singer, for their plans to take shape. The current Singer of Lladrana takes matters into her own hands and summons Jikata from Earth to battle the Dark. 

Jikata, an acclaimed musician on Earth, must learn new ways and accept the magic of Amee and the friendship and aid of the other Exotiques if they are to succeed in freeing this strange and wondrous planet from misery. 

ECHOES IN THE DARK is the final book in the SUMMONING series and it wraps up everything nicely. The book actually follows the fates of Jikata and Raine, the fifth Exotique summoned, whose mission is to build a ship to take the Lladranan forces to battle the Dark. 

Raine’s story began in the fourth book, KEEPERS OF THE FLAME, but it’s only in this book that you really see her story unfold. She’s, perhaps, the most frightened of the Exotiques summoned to Amee. Her botched summoning by the seamasters left her without friends and with the inability to travel far from the sea. She was abused in her first months on Amee, before the other Exotiques and the Lladranans were aware she’d been brought over already. So she finds it harder to trust and is deemed the most likely to return home when the Snap comes, the time when Mother Earth calls her children home and they must make a choice to stay on Amee or return to Earth. 

Raine spends her time designing the ship to carry the fighting contingent to the center of the Dark’s power and learning how she really can build a ship with magic. 

Jikata, meanwhile, stays sequestered for a time with the land’s current Singer, who avoids Jikata’s questions yet demands hard work and attention to detail. The other Exotiques are denied access to her and Jikata is told little of what’s expected of her. She does get some sense of why she’s been summoned by the visions she keeps having. They show her the planet in the form of a woman with a leech attached to her side, the Dark.  

Jikata finally decides she’s had enough of the Singer and escapes the Singer’s Abbey. She meets up with Luthan, the Singer’s former representative, who escorts her to the other Exotiques.  

Once together, the Exotiques must use all their skills to prepare for the final battle. They must also all deal with the knowledge that some, if not all, of them will likely perish in the coming confrontation. 

At times I kind of wished Raine had her own book, as the other Exotiques did. Going back and forth from Raine to Jikata was somewhat disorienting at times, but, in the end, I can see why Ms. Owens paired the two Exotiques together. And it did make for a glorious end to the series. 

Both women had to face their fears and their weaknesses and they came out stronger for their inner battles. That, in turn, led them to be that much more effective in their fight against the Dark. 

There have been romantic elements in each of the books, but romance is not the true genre of the series. It’s more fantasy with romantic elements.  I wouldn’t have minded more romance and more dwelling on the pair bondings between each of the Exotiques and their men, but, again, I have no quibbles with how Ms. Owens went about writing her series. I’ve greatly enjoyed each book in the series and wouldn’t mind if she decided to write about others from Lladrana, like Koz, a brother of one of the Exotiques.  

For me, the mark of a really good book is if I keep asking, “And then what happened?” I’ve done that with each book in this series. And while I was greatly satisfied with the ending of ECHOES IN THE DARK and the Summoning series itself, I still find myself wondering how the Exotique gang is getting along. Maybe someday Ms. Owens will let us know.

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