Evocation by S.T. Gibson

From The Sunday Times bestselling author of B&N's best books of 2022 A Dowry of Blood, comes a spellbinding and vibrant new series.
 

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…

Described as an urban fantasy (or rather urban supernatural?) novel with a polyamorous setup between the main characters, I spent the entire first half of the novel baffled at what I was reading and what the book was trying to accomplish. Despite an intriguing synopsis detailing a plot with a demon contract, the occult, and a secret society, all of these seemingly interesting plot elements felt sidelined for character relationships and drama. I had to ask a friend who also read this to see if this would be considered romantasy or rather, romance-supernatural since it kept making bizarre relationship-focused choices that sacrificed time that could’ve been spent on the main plot. That’s fine if a book commits and does a deep dive into that, after all the romance crossover genres are thriving. However, despite spending almost all of its time on its poly relationships, Evocation unfortunately fails to make that focus interesting to read or care about.

I will be the first to admit that I am not well-read in the dynamics or structure of polyamorous relationships (watching a few Anthony Padilla interview videos on the matter probably isn’t enough to count). However, my problems and disinterest with the content had little to do with the poly aspect and fully to do with the individual relationships. Structured initially as a love triangle with Rhys married to Moira and previously entangled with David years before, both relationships with Rhys felt poorly constructed and described. The book constantly hammers the reader with reminders of Rhys and David’s past on and off, rough relationship but fails to mention anything about the relationship itself. There’s aspects of control and addiction that are lightly touched on, but the connection to their relationship is sparse at best. There’s also very little information about what they found appealing in each other in the first place (apart from being polar opposites, attracted physically to each other, and craving the “wild ride” of the other) or why they still have lingering feelings four or five years later. They originally met due to Rhys’s interest but lack of natural talent with the supernatural, and there was so much potential to revisit these early years to contrast with how strained their relationship is now. A lot of stories focused on ex’s rekindling their romance highlight the high’s, low’s, and moments of the original relationship in order to give the reader context to why the characters want to get back together. Evocation makes the mistake of only showing some of the low’s with none of the other aspects, resulting in poor character motivations for the reader to get behind. The book makes a point to highlight how toxic their past relationship was to each character (which are frankly surface level at best), but this is also simply stated rather than being shown through experiences or evocative flashbacks (couldn’t resist the bad pun).

Rhys’s other relationship with his wife Moira feels even less developed than David’s. Admittedly I didn’t realize there was a short 80-90 page novella previously written that covered the events of David’s attempted exorcism of Rhys and Moira’s house, perhaps there were more details included in that short story. However there is very little time and effort spent in Evocation to detail their relationship and marriage which should be included here, considered the limited print and availability of Gibson’s Odd Spirits (in the US it’s not even available for purchase in the Kindle bookstore until late 2024 despite its original release in 2018). There’s almost nothing covering how they met, how their relationship grew to marriage, apart from Rhys constantly throwing her compliments about her gorgeous she is/was, and less post-marriage. A lot of their relationship falls back on “we’re married and very happy” but does little to elaborate on why they feel it to be so. Rhys’s character experiences a lot of guilt for his betrayal of Moira behind her back but without a solid base of their existing relationship, this guilt doesn’t have the impact that it should (not to mention the general reader reaction of finding Rhys to be a terrible person, no amount of guilt will fix that impression). The fact that this book is told from the perspectives of both husband and wife and still fails to show the reader the intricacies of their relationship is a notable misstep. On that note, Rhys’s perspective was also the most bland and tiring to read of the three. I’d go as far to say that the book may have been stronger with only David’s and Moira’s perspectives, with more time devoted to each..

These weak relationships were likely exacerbated due to my lack of interest in Rhys as a character. His personality, character development and psyche felt bland at best, polarizing at worst. I’m not going to judge his questionable choices and obvious repeated betrayals of both Moira and David as I believe characters are allowed to be flawed in the context of a strong narrative, however the internal voice and character logic at times swing wildly in different directions based on what’s needed to create the most angst and drama, rather than a proper staged setup. In general, I found Rhys’s character to be the facilitator of all the conflict and drama within Evocation’s plot. Gibson has Rhys constantly make poor decisions to move the plot rather than using the various other plot threads for a less contrived approach. But going back to Rhys, it feels like a major blunder if the love interest in the triangle is unlikable and boring. Not only did I not care about who ultimately ended up with Rhys, I also didn’t care about any hurt feelings for him (which obviously is quite a lot of the book’s content).

The one positive note is that I did enjoy reading about David’s and Moira’s growing friendship and emotional intimacy. In an enemies to friends to something more arc, David and Moira’s connection was the most interesting and intriguing couple to read about by far. Not only does Gibson highlight their insecurities, each acting as a foil and mentor to the other in that regard, but the supernatural elements are also applied well to this pairing. David’s ability to scry and observe the dead vs Moira’s abilities of an empath and defensive warder were interesting to read about and provided much needed lore to the story. David’s guilt and Moira’s concern over his well-being during the demon possession arc were easily the best written character moments in the whole novel. This arc perhaps was also more enjoyable due to the complete absence of Rhys and the effective incorporation of David’s backstory.

I’ve spent a lot of this review talking about relationships despite this book being advertised as an urban fantasy book. That’s because there’s so little of the urban fantasy and supernatural content actually in there. I thought the demon contract and possession plot to be interesting, particularly the history of the Aristarkhov family and fortune, but it’s severely underused apart from the beginning and end of the book. The occultic society is another element that had a lot of potential to be interesting, but is merely used to provide a friend group for David to gossip about boys with and the high priest succession as a position for him and Rhys to spar over. David’s childhood and abusive training as Evegni’s heir and skilled user of the dark arts had the basis to be great, but was seemingly included only to serve as a source of childhood trauma for David and Moira to bond over. It’s frustrating how laughably poor Evocation incorporates and uses its fantasy/supernatural content. In particular, the demon possession plot progresses so slowly that you almost forget it’s a thing in the middle of the book, only for the plot to throw it into crisis mode with only 50 pages left with little finesse.

Planned as a start to a new series, I can see a lot of compelling elements that can work in future novels and necessary groundwork being laid in Evocation. But as an individual book, I’m still baffled at what I just read (at least it was an easy and fairly quick read). There were brief moments where the story felt like it was showing signs of life (or should I say, signs of the dead) such as David and Moira’s lessons on their respective forms of magic, only to cut it short by going back to its tiring relationship drama. ST Gibson tried to write this book as an urban fantasy story but spends all the time on a poly relationship that is lackluster, poorly constructed, and perhaps most damning, not even romantic or spicy (hey if the relationship and romance isn’t the best written, at least make it hot to read as a saving grace, no?). This last point can best be highlighted by a sex scene between Rhys and David that feels throw-in as a necessity in the last 30 pages that not only has poor timing and context, but is also rushed compared to his scene with Moira. And to top it all off, I don’t know if you can even consider this a poly relationship if one couple is connected only on an emotional level, that frankly feels more like friends than anything more intimate. Either that or I simply didn’t get this book despite picking it up with an open mind.