Welcome to the Final stage of SPFBO 10! As you know, the 10 blogs all picked their champion who advanced into the finals, including ourselves. Check out our SPFBO 10 page for more info! SPFBO 10 ends on April 30th, and so we’ll post our finalist reviews every two weeks or so until then.
Our 5th SPFBO 10 finalist review is for Gates of Hope by J. E. Hannaford. The order of the reviews within a post will be in alphabetical order.
A quick reminder about how we are proceeding in the Finals: our judges had the freedom to opt out of reading any of the books due to personal interest, time restrictions, unforeseen life events, etc. Our aim is to have at least 4 reviews/scores for each finalist.
Both in the Semi-Final and Final stages we have a DNF rule in place: if a judge reads a book (either semi-finalist or finalist if they didn’t opt out beforehand), they have to read at least 25% of it. If they decide to DNF between 25%-50% they’ll have to give a score but can opt out of writing a review, and if they DNF after 50% (or not) then also have to score AND write a review.
For Gates of Hope we have 4 reviews and 4 scores for your reading pleasures. Note: Tru and Timy decided to sit this one out due to being good friends with the author, and Timy reading a very early beta copy of the book. We thought adding our scores or reviews would be unfair to the competition.
So, without further ado, let’s take a closer look at our first finalist!
Table of Contents
| Series: | Aulirean Gates #1 |
| Genre: | Fantasy |
| Publisher: | self-published |
| Date of Publishing: | April 11, 2023 |
| Pages: | 492 |
The Watcher shattered the gates. Now hope must arise from the shards.
Five hundred cycles ago, the Watcher closed the gates between the world of Lieus and its moons to end a war. Since then magic has been hidden, relegated to childhood tales. On the outer moon of Tebein, any human showing magically aligned traits would sentence their entire community to death at the hands of the native awldrin overlords.
For awldrin are immortal and their memories long.
Even peace is transient, and on Lieus, invasive monsters are encroaching on Caldera, leaving Darin and his bonded moonhound to face nightmares made real. As the creatures spread their wings, Suriin’s father is injured, and she must delve deep into the secrets of the Black Palace to try and save him.
Elissa’s magic could not have bloomed a a worse time on Tebein, as the awldrin are roused, and now she must run to save everyone she loves.
Far more than the fate of their loved ones is at stake, but will any of them see it in time?
Arina
Read: 100%
J.E. Hannaford’s Gates of Hope tests the borders of progression fantasy, preferring characters that slowly uncover their true potential over epic, world-altering quests.
One of this book’s strengths lies in its multiple POVs, which offer distinct cultural perspectives and a wider view of the world(s) within the book.
It freshens up its storyline further with its inventive magic system, tying music to colorful manifestations of power, where characters are able to shape their magic through adjusting their volume and pitch, which adds a poetic element to many moments.
The characters themselves play against genre standards and expectations really well; the male lead initially sets out with grandeur dreams of becoming a knight and finds his fate better suited towards another direction. The elite magical guard sect are seen as healers and carers.
The world brims with these subversive elements, where Hannaford’s creativity shines through while allowing us veteran fantasy readers to explore something new in a most beloved genre.
That said, by the 40% mark, I found myself tapping my fingers. The writing style is very simplistic and straightforward, paling in comparison to the nuance of the world. Some of the cultural elements were a bit questionable — why would someone raised in a culture where their hair is a life-threatening danger, and living underground with limited water supply, just not shave it?
I also picked up quite a (admittedly neurotic) pet peeve regarding the book’s overuse of page breaks. These would sometimes even break a scene after one character’s dialogue, only to pick it back up with the other character’s answer. Although not exactly a narrative breach, it ended up disrupting my reading experience.
Ultimately, Gates of Hope will appeal to readers who enjoy a good slow-burn with a focus on self-discovery and carving one’s path in a rough world.
Drew
Read: 100%
The world of Gates of Hope is perhaps one of the more fascinating ones I’ve come across in a while. At one point, the world of Lieus and its moons were linked, and travel between them was achieved by crystalline gates on each. But after conflict between humankind and the seemingly ageless alien awldrin approaches apocalyptic levels, a third party takes action. After their destruction of the gates, the bulk of humanity remains on Lieus while the awldrin are restricted to the small outer moon of Tebein. By the time of the main storyline, much of the knowledge of the gates has been lost or hidden.
We follow three protagonists in alternating chapters, Darin, Siriin and Elissa. All three are of similar age, are in the process of learning their abilities and eventually find themselves having their own quests, but that’s where the similarities end. When Darin first arrives at The Black Palace, the center of learning for magic users on Lieus, he has no ambition other than earning a decent wage that he can then send home. Having worked in his parents’ inn, he originally applies to be a guard before events push him in a different direction. While he doesn’t shirk from using magic, he does struggle with the main way in which he is taught to channel it, through song. Plus, he also gets what is probably my favourite relationship, between himself and his constant companion, Staramine.
By comparison, Siriin, as the daughter of two well regarded magic users, has known she will eventually attend The Black Palace for years. Although somewhat headstrong and prone to not thinking through her actions at first, this is tempered by the events of her journey from her isolated home to the Palace. With her primary ability of dream-walking apparent, although stifled, from a young age, she takes to the magic instruction much better than Darin.
Elissa, as a contrast, has had the hardest life of all of them. Descended from the few humans who were stranded on Tebein when the gates were destroyed, she ekes out a hard-scrabble life under the watchful eyes of the awldrin overlords. Worse, since she has the tell-tale lilac hair that signifies magical talent, she has to keep her hair constantly dyed and avoid notice or else risk not only her execution but that of everyone she knows.
The three viewpoints help to illustrate different elements of the world and showcase how much it has been thought-out. From various plants and herbs used at the Black Palace, to the placid and domesticated fala and the deadly Xotryl, it’s obvious there is a great deal of Lieus left to explore in further installments. A little less is shown of Tebein, but that’s also in keeping with Elissa’s trapped existence and it’s not until she is encouraged to leave those confines, that we begin to see more.
While it does take time for the story to progress, close to halfway before the protagonists start to have their own agency, I never felt that it dragged and patience is rewarded with plenty to enjoy.
Jen
Read: 100%
Gates of Hope was the one book I was really excited to read. I’ve seen this one around on the X for a while and everything about it had me intrigued!
The world of Gates of Hope is full and is just very cool all around. We immediately learn that the Gate was destroyed due to a terrible war, unfortunately stranding some from their homes for decades.
Being a Stargate fan, I was looking forward to seeing how Hannaford handled the gates/portal connecting worlds idea- which in this case they’re actually gates to the moons around a single planet. I really liked how that made this set-up seem more self-contained and to the fantasy-side of things while allowing us to skip a million details on how the gates all work. Don’t ask me about my reasoning behind what’s acceptable to handwave away but to me it just seems easier to buy this sort of scenario on the small scale, especially with the help of that guardian/gatekeeper dragon.
Anyway,
The summary gives us a fair view of what to expect so I’ll skip the recap.
The story is told through three pov’s and through them we learn about the people, world, the war, and the various types of magic.
The characters’ journeys did feel more to the coming-of-age side of things– especially Darin and Suriin’s who are both at an academy. Our last character Elissa is an older woman, which honestly took me near half the book to realize. I think because of her circumstances and always trying to stay hidden, I assumed she was young like the other two.
I’m generally not big on the whole magic school setting, but there are always exceptions and here it didn’t feel too schoolish. It helped too, that the characters had such different learning atmospheres – shaking things up adding variety in their lessons.
I like the magic system set-up; Surriin’s was about using emotions, and Darin’s was musical based. I found it very cool and easy to understand.
I also (quite surprisingly) enjoyed Darin and his newly bonded to moonhound Star, who can speak to one another through images. I sometimes feel like the animal companion scenarios have been done to death, but I liked the way this bond was shown. It wasn’t forced and felt very natural and reminded me of Sniegoskis’ Remy Chandler and his dog Marlowe.
*
Despite all that I liked about the story, I found I really struggled to finish Gates of Hope.
First of all, I didn’t fall in love with the characters for a very long time. I am a person who needs that extra love for the characters, and a desire to cheer them on to sit through details. Basically, if there isn’t some greater mystery or a lot more action to keep me invested in that slower to fall together world-building like we have in the Gates of Hope, then I need to love them enough to read about them eating their cereal.
So, while I generally don’t mind a slow book, without that love to keep me invested for so long, the biggest culprit here became the pacing. The waiting for a character to reach a point where I understood not only them as characters, but also how they relate to others and to world around them became too bogged down in the attention to the day-to-day details of each character. And with three mpov’s it takes a while to iron out all the wrinkles and see the big picture. Of course, this is only my opinion and what doesn’t work for me is bound to work for someone else.
That said, this feels like the kind of story that fans of Robin Hobb would enjoy. I also feel this is one of those stories that is really going to pay-off in the next book, since most of that heavy-lifting of the world-building has been taken care.
Liis
Read: 100%
Gates of Hope is very much a story that intends to keep the reader in the moment, with activities of academic, mysterious, magical and exploring kind of type. It also keeps the reader within scenes by providing a lot of detailed look&feel about the atmosphere, and the story itself is carried forward by a steady, calmly evolving string of events.
The three POVs were all very “meaty” character arcs, and they were all three interesting in their own right. At the same time, I feel the chapter by chapter changes in between the POVs broke the story too far and wide for me. When I wanted to spend time with Darin, the chapter was over and we moved to the next character. When I finally started feeling interested in Suriin, the setting broke again. Personally, I found Elissa the most “distant” to me. The most intriguing POV for me was Darin, followed by Suriin.
As a whole, I found my attention wandering. I knew this was all working up to something, but I think I was expecting that “something” a lot sooner. Quite a lot of setup in terms of characters spending time on learning their unique skills and finding their feet – it just all spread out too much for me in too much detail. That said, this is a personal preference and nothing to do with the writing itself.
Hannaford shows skill with being methodical in story structure and really presenting each moment to its full potential. Gates of Hope feels like a thorough set-up for things yet to come. The introductions are out of the way, the scene is set, and the story will likely really take flight to some epic heights.
Our score for Gates of Hope by J. E. Hannaford:
For more SPFBO content, please visit our SPFBO 10 page!
If you don’t want to miss any of our posts, please consider signing up to our monthly newsletter or follow us on social media:
1 Comment