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| Book Cover via Amazon.com |
Opinion
I want to thank Josh Matthews for coming to me and asking me to review his novel. He’s been so patient as well, so I’d want to give him a second thank you for his kind patience while I read down my pile of novels toward his. He sent me a free mobi copy, which was so kind of him.
For the start of the review let’s go into the initial impressions that I have for the book. The first action sequence made sense to me, and the description and detail work in the characters, worldbuilding, and excitement factor was excellent. I found the action sequence interesting, and yes, the character names got my attention. Without hooking in the traditional sense, I became caught up with the presentation of what was possible. I found this exciting and different sort of beginning.
With all of that in mind let’s go into some critiques for “Hell Gate.” My first critique is in the “Story Structure, Foundation, and Presentation” portion of my scoring. I feel like I’m becoming a broken record on this point as I’ve mentioned it numerous times on many reviews. So for that, I’m sorry to you all, I don’t mean to repeat a critique. I feel that this is a big deal for e-book copies, so thank you for hearing me out again. If your book has no breaks between paragraphs, and there isn’t an extra space between them, the reader is stuck with walls of text to endure. Now on a regular novel, it might look one way, but if you are making an e-copy, take this to heart. Make little sections, consider breaks. It helps the eye to move across the page and gives the reader a more enjoyable experience in reading the book. There weren’t any line spacing breaks between the paragraphs. There were indenting marks, but with the justified alignment, there was no refreshing natural tapering off that can help with eyes.
Let’s go into the very positive things I enjoyed about “Hell Gate.” Firstly, there is some beautiful chapter and sectional markers in this book. I know that seems cheesy to love detail work on an ebook, but I’m a sucker for it. I love when an author takes the time to add a flourish or detail to the pages to make my eyes happy and take a break now and again. It’s very nice.
My next big positive joy came with how well "Hell Gate" is written. The grammar and spelling are right on, and I didn’t find any punctuation issues at all. The spot editing is perfection, so kudos to the editor who worked on this book. It’s wonderful.
Next, this book didn’t take me that long to read. I started reading about 8 AM on a Monday, and even with my regular page breaks and stops, the book was finished by 4:45 PM. That’s pretty awesome. So if you can devote a one time sitting to reading, this isn’t a bad book to go through. Pacing and tension were just right for reading and understanding at a reasonable pace. That says something to a reading pro like me because I wasn’t stuck on anything and I didn’t need to go back and say “What? Huh?” and figure it out.
For this part of the review, I’d like to go into what I loved about “Hell Gate.” Firstly, there is an underlying theme of supernatural items that work with scientific principals. I found that the explanations on why things were working as they were in the supernatural sense, was logical based on the science presented. Similar to how Marvel Comics explains the “gods” of Asgard, as an example of something I noticed, “Hell Gate” explains the Hell gates themselves as both a supernatural creation but also scientific. There is this fantastic piece in chapter three that just piqued my scientific curiosity and left my mind with a rich interest of what other techs there was in this world that would include it.
That brings me to the next piece, and I loved the world building in the story. Though “Hell Gate” uses common and real things for the world-building, there are supernatural and even spiritual aspects that were added. I can tell that every bit of the world building process was very carefully considered, because of how the environment works with the character progression and the story. It’s nice to see a world created for the characters who will be in it. I found this very rewarding from a storytelling perspective, but also a character perspective.
Next, let’s look at the character progression. The arch in the story move very well, and there is a beautiful effect to the purpose behind the characters as the conflict on the story builds. There is this touching part at the end of the book between two of the characters. No spoilers, but the grief and misery coming from one of them was so touching. I could almost taste it, it was sad, and it brought me to a place where I remember grief in my own life.
Lastly, let me say how much I appreciate that the book is a whole story. This ends on a proper and well-done ending. There was a decent setup toward going to another book, but there was not a poorly crafted cliffhanger that didn’t answer anything. I was thrilled with how this book began, moved through all of the conflicts and challenges, then ended on a beautiful note. There is hope there, and uncertainty but it’s not set up to end in a way that it cheats the reader from the conclusion.
Score
With everything taken into consideration on the math, Hell Gate received a score of 89/100 which is a four-star review on Amazon and Goodreads. If you are looking for a fantasy novel with a lot of supernatural and dark themes, this would be an excellent book to pick up!
