Half Gate by K.T. MunsonMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
When I first read one of the Gate Trilogy novels in 2017, I was completely absorbed by the story because of the author’s fascinating creation of the characters in a ‘Nethergate’ kind of world. The ideas behind it involve demons and trapped spirits, amongst many other-worldly concepts. Half Gate is a short work of three short stories, which illustrates further the various kinds of problems its characters may meet.
In the first short story we meet Aqitaka and Ellaria who seem destined to become lovers. But Aqitaka is from another world. Can he stay? In the next story Azura, a commoner, is suddenly caught in a frozen world, Oran, and discovers a prince in the same situation. His father is determined to prevent the two marrying but Azura has become their world’s Gate Guardian, a powerful influence. Story three is about a student of fringe worlds. She is called Elisabeth, and she discovers a secret and dangerous book. There is a strong likelihood that the spirit trapped within it will ruin her work, maybe cause havoc in their world. Can she create a suitable device to render it friendly or harmless?
Despite the assertions that Half Gate can be read as a standalone book, I disagree. I had some idea about what was going on in this book of three stories but still struggled to understand the overall plot(s). The worlds that Munson creates here are varied and intriguing but I felt all the way through that each story could have been developed much more into a novel of its own. The pace of each is fast and furious but their worlds would benefit greatly for being in much greater depth, with its own twists and turns in my opinion. Somehow, I wanted the main characters to figure more significantly, weaving in and out of new situations developed by this skilled and imaginative author. Her world-building is so fascinating it seemed to me to be a waste to keep them so short.
Unfortunately, once again I find my overall rating reduced through the need for further careful editing in this book. For example when it said ‘palatable’ did it really want to say ‘palpable?’ There were too many punctuation and grammatical errors, with too many US idioms and words throughout the narrative that made it difficult for this UK reader to fully understand what was being explained. I am a firm believer that the patois and dialect for a region should be kept within the written dialogue of a novel. The conversations were real and well done but exposition was not always clear to me. Words in the story like: dove; snuck; sunk; snagged; scooted; and barreled mean something quite different in a UK dictionary.
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