TimmyMac reviewed The Gates by Iain Rob Wright
Review of 'The Gates' on 'Goodreads'
2 stars
I'm conflicted about posting a negative review here - the author made his books available for free during the COVID-19 quarantine, and that's very generous and awesome of him. So I'm posting this in the spirit of constructive criticism, I guess.
The positives: the premise is very interesting, and there was something in there that kept me reading to the end, so the bones of a good story are in there. The fact that I wanted to see what happened despite my criticism below is what I gave the second star for.
But other than that, I feel like I'm taking crazy pills reading all the glowing 5-star reviews here that declare it an amazing book. I found the characters to be one-dimensional, the dialogue to be absurdly unrealistic, and I definitely echo the reviewers below who complain that the "demons" are really just zombies with a different name. Especially …
I'm conflicted about posting a negative review here - the author made his books available for free during the COVID-19 quarantine, and that's very generous and awesome of him. So I'm posting this in the spirit of constructive criticism, I guess.
The positives: the premise is very interesting, and there was something in there that kept me reading to the end, so the bones of a good story are in there. The fact that I wanted to see what happened despite my criticism below is what I gave the second star for.
But other than that, I feel like I'm taking crazy pills reading all the glowing 5-star reviews here that declare it an amazing book. I found the characters to be one-dimensional, the dialogue to be absurdly unrealistic, and I definitely echo the reviewers below who complain that the "demons" are really just zombies with a different name. Especially towards the end where we have bartenders and accountants fighting the hordes with kitchen knives. The same creatures that decimated the British Army earlier in the book? It was pure Walking Dead silliness at that point.
And the ending - come on. No resolution whatsoever. We just stopped after a POV chapter from a guy only briefly mentioned earlier in the book. Makes me think the series was written as one long story and then the author just broke it up every X number of pages.
Because of the reviews here and on Reddit, where I found the link to the giveaway, I may try a different book by the author outside of this series, but man, this one did not do it for me.