TimMason reviewed The Thirteenth Gate by Kat Ross
Review of 'The Thirteenth Gate' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
I came to this somewhat reluctantly. I had greatly enjoyed the Persian suite, but this one is reviewed as yet another Jack the Ripper book, and this alone was enough to put me off. Jack is a hackneyed theme, a perennial of the would-be gothic, and interest in him is often prurient and misogynistic - see eastendwomensmuseum.org/blog/fed-up-with-jack-the-ripper .
On the other hand, I did want to follow up on what the future held in store for Tija and her daeva friends. So, after having gone through the first in this series - Tija and co are not yet introduced - I determined to pick this one up as well.
Happily, Jack the Ripper quickly fades into the background, once it has been established that he is an avatar of something much more deadly, and even more fictional. The reader may recall that Tija had given herself the task of hunting …
I came to this somewhat reluctantly. I had greatly enjoyed the Persian suite, but this one is reviewed as yet another Jack the Ripper book, and this alone was enough to put me off. Jack is a hackneyed theme, a perennial of the would-be gothic, and interest in him is often prurient and misogynistic - see eastendwomensmuseum.org/blog/fed-up-with-jack-the-ripper .
On the other hand, I did want to follow up on what the future held in store for Tija and her daeva friends. So, after having gone through the first in this series - Tija and co are not yet introduced - I determined to pick this one up as well.
Happily, Jack the Ripper quickly fades into the background, once it has been established that he is an avatar of something much more deadly, and even more fictional. The reader may recall that Tija had given herself the task of hunting down the diabolical creatures that Nazafareen's breaking of the gates had loosed upon the world. Kept alive by her link to a young daeva, she has survived down the centuries chasing ghouls wherever she finds them.
As is usually the case with Kat Ross, the story rips along, the characters are subjected to a series of mental and physical tests of their mettle, and there is little of the agonized introspection - the Silver Surfer syndrome - that so often mars modern fantasy. This is not to say that the characters do not have their stresses and their doubts; they do, but the author handles them deftly, allowing the reader to grasp them with a minimum of fuss. The relationship between Tija and her daeva consort is clearly a difficult and complex one, but for the most part the knots are bared with a subtle knife.
The main characters from the first book in the series also figure. Harry, the lead, is a young woman who takes on some of the attributes of Sherlock Holmes, although these don't get in the way too much. Her constant companion, John Watson, carries much of the action. He's obviously in love with Harry, but the latter has little time for affairs of the heart. (Actually, I'm rooting for a passion à deux between Harry and Tija at some stage in the series).
Kat Ross must have had a lot of fun writing this. She slips in references to a number of cultural figures, including Conan Doyle, Henry Sidgwick and - my favourite - the butler, Quimby who could be either Phineas - an American spiritualist - or Fred, producer of the Tom and Jerry cartoons. Or both.