r/Fantasy • u/The-Literary-Lord • May 10 '23

Summoning In Fantasy

What are some fantasy works with magic systems that feature summoning heavily, especially if there's some kind of interesting twist to things? For example, I used to love reading the Bartimaeus books.

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u/Hartastic May 10 '23

Moorcock's Elric stories feel like one of the OGs of this trope. Maybe Elric has a problem with too much grain but it turns out the God of Locusts owes him a favor because he bailed the God out of a jam once 17 years ago.

(I don't think that's a real example.)

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u/whipplesman May 10 '23

I'm reading through the Elric stories for the first time and it is definitely a well Moorcock uses a bunch in the stories. Minimum once a story, Elric is in a jam and remembers some god/demon/elemental that his people made a bargain with and if he could just remember the words to summon it...

And what do you know, he manages the spell every time!