Point of View

The point of view of The Summoning is the third-person perspective. The narrator is reliable, but not omniscient, as only the perspective of the book's main character, Sudi, is followed. Every scene in the novel includes her, and while the reader is privy to her private thoughts and feelings, the other characters' thoughts are revealed only through the passages in which they have dialogue or their reactions are noted. For example, at the end of Chapter 18, the reader is told that the howl of jackals were, to Sudi, "sweet sounds that awakened an odd longing, and a keen awareness that she was walking toward her death," but the narrator provides no such information about the thoughts of Meri, Dalila, or other characters.

The book contains an appropriate balance of exposition and dialogue, is written in the past tense, and appears to cover a period of about...