A review by crookedtreehouse
The Books of Magic, Volume 2: Summonings by John Ney Rieber

3.0

There are a lot of interesting pieces to this collection. My favorite being the succubus storyline where you're set up to believe that this is going to be a typical story where a male has to overcome a seductive succubus to master his own fate. Instead what you get is a very empathetic female character, who happens to be a succubus, navigating her feelings around a boy who uninentionally treats women poorly. It's a much more interesting story premise. Tim Hunter From The Future and Tim Hunter From The Current Timeline are both almost villains in this collection. Their decision making is mostly poor and they're incredibly selfish. Several female characters attempt to help Tim in various ways, and he struggles against them improving his humanity. From that perspective I liked this book.

The other parts of this book, however, didn't interest me. The constantly shifting questions about Tim's parentage don't emotionally engage me. I don't like Tim. Why do I care who his real parents are? The arc about a chimney sweep child who is thrown out of paradise to work in a factory of magic robots who are ... doing something, I guess ... was extremely dull. And adding in the Faerie Folk into the mix, just so their king could tell Tim that everything he knew about his family is wrong. Again. made my eyes roll.

I'm not sure I'm ever going to like Tim Hunter and The Books Of Magic, at this rate, but I'm at least curious to see how the story progresses, and whether it crosses back over with Hellblazer or Sandman anytime soon.