An Apt Action-packed Finale To This Amazing Series

This series has turned me into a Jeri Westerson fan; I find her writing style engaging, intelligent and easy to read. I love the way Jeri weaves her plots; they are complex enough to keep me intrigued without being messy or convoluted. I feel that there's always a good balance of action, humour, tension, horror, mystery and romance in her tales and the pace that they develop just feels right.

I downloaded the narration by Suzanne Elise Freeman and enjoyed her performance. She is a new-to-me narrator and I liked the emotions that her voice conveyed during the various scenes throughout this book and the pace at which she read it. Her character voices aren't as varied as some narrators I've listened to, meaning that during scenes of group dialogue, individuals weren't as distinctly recognisable, however, I didn't feel that it detracted from the story.

I really like our heroine, Kylie; she’s intelligent, resilient, resourceful and has heaps of gumption (even if she does throw herself into situations without thought at times) and I like how she’s evolved, becoming more self-assured and comfortable in her Chosen Host shoes. She has grown since the first book and she still continued to do so during this final adventure in both her skills and knowledge.

I love the fact that the secondary characters that Jeri created to populate her world, feel just as real as our leads and all have strong, memorable personalities, they aren’t just filling the page; kind old Doc Boone who’s turned into quite the mage, teen Jolene who’s definitely come into her own, Serephena, Jeff, Nick, Ed and who out there doesn’t know a person like Ruth Russell with her self-important air and closely guarded secrets! I loved that she wrote her characters with the complexities that we’d see in those around us, that they had a good balance of strengths and insecurities to make them feel real, even the supernatural ones. ;-)

I love the fact that The Darkest Gateway kept me guessing; I was holding my breath at times, on the edge of my seat waiting to see what would happen next. I loved the shocking revelations, tense stand-offs and action-packed fight scenes. But fear not, good readers, it’s not all tension and scares there are giggles and a good sprinkling of tummy tingling passion to balance it all out too.

Due to the graphic violence, sexual content and disturbing nature of some of the scenes in this book, I would recommend The Darkest Gateway to adults who are not offended with this type of content and love reading well written tales of magic, curses, mystery and horror with a bit of passion, love and romance thrown in the mix.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!