A Deal With The Devil

I recently finished reading Evocation by S.T. Gibson. This is book #1 in the Summoner's Circle series.

POSSIBLE SPOILER ALERT

  Rating: 3.75/5 stars

This exclusive edition features an exclusive cover designed by @timbeeren, with sprayed edges, a reversible dust jacket by @ouijacine, metallic ink case design by @thebitterseason, and end pages by @marblenxxart. The book is also signed by author S.T. Gibson on an author page with an author's letter bound into the book, and bonus content for subscribers.

"The Devil knows your name, David Aristarkhov. 

As a teen, David Aristarkhov was a psychic prodigy, operating under the shadow of his oppressive occultist father. Now, years after his father’s death and rapidly approaching his thirtieth birthday, he is content with the high-powered life he’s curated as a Boston attorney, moonlighting as a powerful medium for his secret society.

But with power comes a price, and the Devil has come to collect on an ancestral deal. David’s days are numbered, and death looms at his door.

Reluctantly, he reaches out to the only person he’s ever trusted, his ex-boyfriend and secret Society rival Rhys, for help. However, the only way to get to Rhys is through his wife, Moira. Thrust into each other’s care, emotions once buried deep resurface, and the trio race to figure out their feelings for one another before the Devil steals David away for good…"

There is a lot to be excited about in Evocation: secret societies, Faustian deals, attractive people in messy relationships...! Many of these lived up to the premise, but this is also a book I'll be hesitant to recommend to everyone. 

The story revolves primarily around David, a serious, high-strung nepotism baby, as he finds his psychic energy suddenly rebelling against him. He's forced to reach out to the last people he wants to see: ambitious, academic ex-boyfriend Rhys and charming wife Moira. The three work together to find the source of David's illness while also testing the limits of their tenuous relationship. 

If you're reading this book because you're interested in the magic/plot/demons, you will be disappointed. This is an extremely character-driven book; we have modern Boston as a setting, where the light magic system is only as important as moving the dynamic between the main characters forward. There's also what I'm recognizing as an ST Gibson standard, where the boundaries of romantic and platonic relationships are shifted, power dynamics experimented with. These are ST Gibson's blorbos!! She wants you to love them as much as she does, and that passion shines through the whole book. The prose itself is impressive. Though it starts off a little clunky, everything smooths out by the 1/3 point. Gibson excels at writing chemistry, and this has one of the best first lines I've read in a long time!

That all being said, there were a few things I didn't love in this book, though I do think these are YMMV:

• First, though Moira was probably my favorite character, I chafed a bit when reading from perspective of someone from the American South. Moira is a black woman from Georgia, and her personality veered sometimes toward stereotypes more than a fully-realized character. A bit too much "Meemaw's good Southern raisin'". I know STG has lived in the South for at least part of her life (but like...Asheville...so...), but these moments felt inauthentic and out of place. 

• One of the pitches of this book is the polyamorous relationship that develops between Rhys, Moira, and David, so I don’t think this is a spoiler to note. Here’s the thing: I buy them as friends, and I buy them as a fully-formed poly relationship, but the transitional period in the middle soured me so that I couldn’t appreciate the final dynamic as much as I thought I was supposed to. Rhys and Moira are in a long-standing relationship, and both express a lot of fear and pain over the idea of infidelity. It does feel a bit odd that the book is essentially cheering for them to cheat and risk each other’s trust, with the understanding on behalf of the reader that it’ll all be okay and this is really the best thing for all of them. At the same time, it doesn’t really manage to bridge that gap; Rhys and David’s relationship feels just sort of accepted as the book goes on, and the jealousy and hurt that Moira explicitly expresses fade away. I get that The Point here is about complicated relationships and how we define heterosexual dynamics. But I feel like if you want the reader to believe that this is really the best option for your main characters, you have to make it feel less like one character’s very real fears of cheating are not that big of a deal. 

Overall, I enjoyed the story and am interested to see how the series develops! This is a good book that is nearly a great book. There are a few things I hope get ironed out a bit more before it releases, but I can easily see the fanart, special editions, and blorbofication that will happen when the right audience finds it.

Check out Evocation, and discover what happens when you mess with the devil.

Happy Reading :)