A review by zraitor
The Gatekeeper and her Guardian by Amy Koto

5.0

Kallie now trains with Ches and tries to keep her life in Wonderland a secret while she suffers many attacks in the real world. The two must find a way to save Wonderland once and for all...

Ches is now her Guardian who must protect her while she fulfills her destiny and he travels back with her, much to the irritation of West, whom Kallie breaks up with. Although thankfully they keep their fighting to a minimum mercifully saving us from the most dreaded thing of all in stories... love triangles.

The love story was handled in this well so even I can't be too grumpy about it. If Ches succeeds he will be granted a wish and he wants his humanity back. But before that can happen they must maintain a platonic relationship as Guardians and Gatekeepers aren't allowed to be together but also thankfully this wasn't played up for cheap drama and was treated respectfully.

Kallie's training goes well and she becomes quite the formidable fighter and she somersaults around a lot. Her powers grow as well and she learns to open and close portals with ease which comes quite in handy. Ches is of course there to fight at her side and they make a great team battling the many evil mages and demons that pop up in this installment.

Yes, demons. The group learns of The Prophecy of Three, and Kallie has premonitions and dreams of hell dimensions opening up and their evil inhabitants pouring forth and destroying the universe. The author goes nuts with their imagination and gives us many different types of crazy monsters and it was wonderful. And just like the second book, the magical mayhem is again on full display and I enjoyed that also.

Stopping all these portals from opening and unleashing hell on Earth will take a ritual performed under a blood moon and requires three ingredients, the blood of the most powerful firstborn witch, the voice of a mermaid, and the Gatekeeper. Unfortunately, this will take the help of the traitorous Mr. Tibbar and although Queen Hartley is imprisoned, who knows what she could be plotting?

The writing in this one is great and very detailed and the author clearly has a passion and enthusiasm for their story. It moves so fast which works very well for it. We see a lot of fighting in this one too which is great.

I know the story has many TV influences but Buffy is by far the strongest as I see it and it was really cranked up here and this felt like a long episode of that at times which I mean as a compliment. It mixes very well with the Alice and Wonderland setting and the author brings it to life the best in this book in my opinion.

If it has any problems at all it is that the big plan in the middle goes exactly how I'm sure everyone will think it will so I was just waiting for that to happen... Also, the author really has a thing with eyes. The colors of everyone's eyes are constantly mentioned and almost always flashing. It's not a big deal but it happened enough for me to notice it certainly.

But anyways this brings the trilogy to a satisfying conclusion. Everything is answered and resolved, lots of action and adventure is had, and we even meet an awesome mermaid character. So read and enjoy one last fun and imaginative journey with Kallie, Ches, and all the others.