BOOK REVIEW | BECKONING OF THE GATE | BENJAMIN J. RYAN

ABOUT THE BOOK

The only life Santha Lathagin has ever known has become her prison. Vicious gossip is everywhere. Whispers of a scandal have turned to accusations of murder, and fingers are pointing her way. Feeling powerless and alone, she yearns for escape.

When Santha stumbles upon a small, rusted key in the forest near her home, it seems her silent pleas have been answered. Awakened by her touch, the key demands to be heard—and she is not the only one to heed its call.

Thrust into a world only glimpsed in the stories of her childhood—of faeries and princes and eldritch magick— Santha sets out to unlock its secrets. But uncovering the truth has its own perils, and as the key’s influence grows, she will be left with a choice: survival or sacrifice.

But will it truly be hers to make?

… All the while, in the north, something ancient stirs. A great power that could unravel the very threads of existence.

REVIEW

Beckoning of the Gate is the debut book of Benjamin J. Ryan and tells the story of Santha Lathagin, a reluctant hero who will find her fate altered when she finds a rusted key in an unknown glade in the forest near her house.

When we initially meet Santha, we discover that she is a lonely soul, a pariah in her village for reasons that we find out later.

As the book progresses, we soon find out that Santha was sexually assaulted by a family friend. However, the trauma continues as she has become the subject of the town gossips who blame her for the incident. In addition to this, it seems that the perpetrator of the assault died in mysterious circumstances and that the fingers of blame are pointed firmly at her.

When she finds a mysterious key in the woods behind her parents’ house, she is attacked by ferocious ‘wights’ that take the form of supernatural dogs. Soon her life is changed irrevocably and she discovers that she will have to leave her old life behind and discover the mystery behind the key that she now carries. Armed with a magic sword from her teacher Dandon. In addition to this Dandon gives her a magical companion, a cat dog called Bianhd who is magically bound to her.

Setting out into the world, she soon finds herself plunged into danger as she sets out to find the mystery of the key.

Whilst enjoyable, the story does suffer at times with trying to fit too much into the story and at times I wish the story had more time to breathe so that there was some chance for the story to grow organically.

However, there were some interesting aspects to the story. The use of folklore and faeries as the main antagonists works really well, giving the story an almost fairy tale like quality. In addition, the world building was good and provided a vivid background to the story.

Ultimately, Beckoning of the Gate is a solid debut marred at times by trying to be too many things at once. It will be interesting to see where the story goes in later books.