Summoned to Thirteenth Grave

In true holiday spirit, today I have for you a review of Darynda Jones’ Summoned to Thirteenth Grave, the final book in her Charley Davidson series. I’m not sure that really qualifies as “holiday”, but I did do a celebratory dance as I was boarding an airplane when I got an email notifying me I had an ARC of this waiting for me to read. Definitely an early Chrsitmas present for me!

Such a wonderful afternoon – a Christmas tree, a fire, and an ARC!

Because I totally skipped Thanksgiving (and most of fall – oops) and am feeling rather celebratory, I would first like to take a moment to thank a few people:

  • the wonderful Darynda Jones, without whose creativity I would not have been able to enjoy this series;
  • the almighty Net Galley people, who decided (or conspired with others to decide, I’m not sure) that I was worth the gift of an ARC of this book; and
  • Karma, for without her intervention I would have been left waiting another month (or more) for my pre-purchased, autographed copy of this book, thus saving the mailman from the inevitable stalking that would have occurred around the release date, and saving me from probable embarrassment. Now I can rest easy knowing I will be getting my autographed copy without feeling – or acting – like a stalker.

For those of you who have not read The Trouble with Twelfth Grave, please do so. Maybe even read the other 11 books in this series that come before that one. The story really does continue from one book to the next and you’ll need all of that context and background for this to make an iota of sense.

There may be spoilers of earlier books so I can set the scene for book 13, but I am going to try REALLY HARD not to have any spoilers for Summoned to Thirteenth Grave. Promise.

As we all know (and by “we”, of course, I mean “those of us who have been waiting for over a year to know how this story resolves”), Charley was sentenced to an eternity in some kind of black, empty hell after she brought her best friend’s daughter back from the dead. While that sounds like a super awesome gesture, God was not super happy about it and, because she’d been warned about it before, He wasted no time enforcing punishment. She was banished to her own hell quicker than she could say the word “coffee”: a place full of darkness, with nothing to stimulate any of her senses, no coffee, nobody to talk to, and nothing to do.

But, as this book starts, Charley is back on Earth. She’s not quite sure how, or why, but after 100 years in hell she isn’t really pushing for an explanation of how she made it back to a land with sunshine. Especially when she feels heat behind her that isn’t coming from the sun – hello, Reyes!

After their little glass-making experiment, Reyes explains that while it was 100 years in hell it had only been 10 days on Earth, and she quickly reunites with her posse: Osh (I love that demon), Garrett, Cookie, Uncle Bob, Gemma, Angel, Amber, Quentin, the biker dudes, even Rocket. Everyone is there, which is cool. Unfortunately, the reunion isn’t so much “happy” as it is, “crap, the world is literally about to be overrun by demons”, and they have only a few days to save the world. And thus, our story starts – literally, it’s a race to the finish.

And damn my own vow to not give spoilers! Without giving anything away – because, trust me, turns out there are several little revelations in this book – I really don’t know if I can say anything else about it.

If you’ve loved this series, you will love this book. The humor, the adventure, the balancing-multiple-problems-at-one-time approach Charley has (such a gentle heart, that girl), the interactions with her posse and with Reyes, the emotional roller coaster that she just can’t seem to avoid – it’s all there, plus the kitchen sink. That’s there, too. Reyes even busts out his undulating cloak and sword. I feel like we got it all in this book, which was awesome.

I was so excited to read this book; and now I am so sad that it’s over.

It is always interesting to me how Darynda somehow manages to gather the bazillion threads in her stories and is able to tie them up in a bow at the end. And the resolution comes fast, y’all, so buckle up towards the end. I had to read it three times and I am still wishing there had been more detail or more extrapolation or something. I’m sure that the simple fact I did not want this series to end had an impact on how quickly I perceived the ending to happen.

Either way, I think in the span of the last two pages my emotions were

  1. What the – NO!
  2. Surely there was another way to do this!
  3. Wait, huh? That sounds cool.
  4. Wait, what just happened?
  5. SERIOUSLY?!

Overall, definitely an excellent book. It lived up to all expectations and fits in with the rest of the series quite nicely. I only have one question: now that’s it’s over, at what point will we find out if/when Darynda is going to do a spin-off? I am totally going to need more of these characters.

Overall: 9/10.

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