A review by cavalary
The Dromost Gate by Matt Heppe

adventurous medium-paced

3.0

This time around, the author does put a synopsis in the beginning, which can help even though it’s rather roughly done. But the real and truly surprising difference is that the focus is now moved well away from the action, making way for the worldbuilding that was avoided in Shadow of the Knight, and also for a fair amount of character development. The action scenes that do exist remain thrilling, but there’s much more to this book, which may be enough to paint Belen in more detail than Salador was so far, and to make the characters seem at least somewhat more like actual people, beyond their skills as warriors or magic users. And I also appreciated that actual depictions of what I tend to call the typical human filth have been largely avoided enough to not mind the fact that it was done in a rather shallow manner that harms realism.

On the other hand, there are no such justifications for finding that same lack of depth when it comes to, well, pretty much everything. Belen is supposed to be so diverse, yet there are barely a few characters that can be seen as individuals, the rest being utterly generic, and the masses almost laughably so. And the contrast between hedonism and prudishness was emphasized far too much, and the same might be said, at least to some extent, about religious fervor, and quite clearly about Ayja’s ignorance when it comes to sexuality. Plus that, while there are better moments, I’d still say that too much is told rather than shown. This still leaves The Dromost Gate as the best book in the series so far, but it also raises the bar, the author seeming to finally try to make that switch from action packed heroic fantasy to actual epic fantasy that he backed away from in the previous book, but not quite managing to get there.