Time for another SPFBOX review! We’re almost at the end and it’s getting exciting!
The Watcher shattered the gates. Now hope must arise from the shards.
Five hundred cycles ago, the Watcher closed the gates between the world of Lieus and its moons to end a war. Since then magic has been hidden, relegated to childhood tales. On the outer moon of Tebein, any human showing magically aligned traits would sentence their entire community to death at the hands of the native awldrin overlords.
For awldrin are immortal and their memories long.
Even peace is transient, and on Lieus, invasive monsters are encroaching on Caldera, leaving Darin and his bonded moonhound to face nightmares made real. As the creatures spread their wings, Suriin’s father is injured, and she must delve deep into the secrets of the Black Palace to try and save him.
Elissa’s magic could not have bloomed a a worse time on Tebein, as the awldrin are roused, and now she must run to save everyone she loves.
Far more than the fate of their loved ones is at stake, but will any of them see it in time?
Gates of Hope follows the story of three different characters in a really unique world. First, as depicted on the cover, we have Darin (and his newly bonded moonhound, Star), who has recently travelled to the Black Palace to train to be a guard, only to find out that he is meant for greater things. Next is Suriin, a girl whose father has been injured and they have had to travel as quickly as possible to the Black Palace for help, and finally Elissa, who is a girl who lives on Tebein, one of the moons of the planet Lieus. Elissa’s magical powers are starting to wake, and that could get her and everyone she loves killed.
This is a world of one planet (Lieus) and two moons (Tebein and Mythos) that used to be connected by magical gates, which were destroyed long ago by The Watcher to end a war between humans and an immortal species known as the awldrin. I thought that was an interesting and unique dynamic for a fantasy world. It has a setting that sounds sci-fi AF, but still somehow isn’t at all.
I wasn’t sure if I was going to like this one. I actually picked it up as one of the first of the finalists to read and ended up putting it down again because I couldn’t get into it at the time. This just proves that sometimes you just need to put a book down for a bit and reevaluate it later, because once I picked it up this second time, I ended up liking it a lot more than I had thought.
I liked Darin as a character. He’s the first man in quite a few years that has bonded with a moonhound, something that is much more common for women. Him learning to communicate with Star, and learning to control his magic was interesting. I enjoyed Suriin and Elissa’s stories well enough, but Darin and him finding his tribe, so to speak, won the day for me. Plus, Star is adorable.
This book was really well written, paced well, and I cared about what happened to the characters. I will definitely attempt to read the next book in the series to see what happens to these guys. The events of the last half of this one left me wondering what is going to happen with the awldrin.
If you like a unique setting with characters that are easy to cheer for, you might just like Gates of Hope. I had 7.5/10 stars of a good time with it.
superstardrifter 
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