Book Review: The Darkest Powers

The Summoning, The Awakening, and The Reckoning by Kelley Armstrong make up the Darkest Powers trilogy, a young adult fantasy series about a fifteen-year-old girl who sees ghosts — or perhaps, she’s schizophrenic — at first, she isn’t sure.

Read together, these three books tell a complete story of a group of teenagers trying to escape from the adults who were supposed to care about them. Each has a special ability, but each is given a mental health diagnosis to explain the ability away.

I greatly enjoyed the characters in this series, beginning with Chloe, who is also the first-person narrator. She is a determined girl, just coming into womanhood, with a certain vulnerability that makes her feel real. Each of the others — Liz, Victoria, Derek, Simon — adds to the group dynamic.

One of the things I really liked about this story was that it fit very well into the young adult category. I wouldn’t have worked with adults. It couldn’t have. This fact added to what I would call a genuine teen sensibility. There was no talking down, no holding back. This was a book for teens about teens, and because of that fact, I found it enjoyable as an adult as well.

I did have a few believability issues when the answers started coming in books 2 and 3, but even then I enjoyed the ride and the adventure.

I also liked the minor romantic subplot, although I didn’t see a need for it to be a triangle. It took time away from everything else that was happening (and there was a lot happening), and the romance was generally too minor a plot to need to be thickened in that way. It made me feel like, in the wake of Twilight, everything has to be a triangle now, but it rarely works.

I do recommend this book to anyone who enjoys YA fantasy.

4/5

Title: The Summoning, The Awakening, and The Reckoning
Author: Kelley Armstrong
Genre: YA Fantasy