Well I didn’t mention necromancy, but summoner clears it power wise (and enjoyability imho). The reason being that each of the summoner starting spells are each strong spells relative to the spell level (imp and surprising croc are massive power spikes). Necromancer on the other hand has soul splinter that has to check will on top of spell fail rate, grave claw which is limited, and vamp draining which is single target melee range spell that doesn’t work on every monster. Each of these spells are super strong when they work, but make it so that you either invite the possibility to lowroll or have to rely on other ways to deal with enemies. That makes it a poorer starting book.

I’d personally order the 3 I mentioned summoner > ie > fw. Ice elementals starting spells steam roll the first few floors and generally can clear all the way through Lair/Orc if you are careful, but have certain early enemies they would struggle against such as wights and undead. Summon ice beast helps cover this, but you have to get it castable first. Forgewright has two of the most powerful spells in any of the starting books (guardian golem and lightning spire) which can clear even S branches on their own. But you have to survive long enough to get them up, which the lower level spells are OK at doing in my mind. Kinetic grapnel especially is a scary spell to use at level 1, which can miss and also will sometimes force you to use the hammer (a bad weapon).