A review by jesshale
The Gates of Sleep by Mercedes Lackey

2.0

I nearly didn't re-read this, remembering being bored with it and, yeah. I was mostly bored with it - I stopped at about 1/3 of the way through for a few days before powering through.

Like a couple of other stories in this series, I think my main issue is the pacing - there are so many pages devoted to set-up with an abrupt unsatisfying climax, not to mention the chapters devoted to the gloating, eeeeeeevil antagonists' point of view.

For this particular book, I found myself frustrated with elements that made no sense, or seemed ready to go somewhere but that were left dangling. For instance (and in no particular order):

Spoiler
- So much is made of Marina's plan to attempt to contact her guardians. She finds pennies for stamps...which turn out to not be pennies. What was the point of this plot point at all? Then, when she manages several times to get out to the vicarage or the sanatorium or church, she doesn't (as I thought she had planned to) asked for help sending a letter. It seems to me a LOT of plot would have been simplified if she had asked either of the very helpful gentlemen to send and receive a letter on her behalf...which may have been why the author went to so much effort to frustrate or "forget" to make this happen.

-Whhhyyyyyyy does no one tell Marina about the curse or her aunt? Even when she is being sent away how do none of her guardians "help her pack" and take a second to say, oh by the way be careful of your aunt she's super evil. Whyyyyyy?

- At the start of the novel Marina is gifted with affinity with Air elementals, yet this never comes to anything. I thought it might be a Chekhov's Gun kind of thing, but nope. Nothing.

- Marina's love of music - told, never shown. I never really got the sense that she actually loved music - books, rather than instruments, were of comfort and use to her.

- Reggie was a mage all along? He knew Marina had shields? What? Where did this plot point come from, and what was the point of it?


So, those were some of the random bits and pieces that irked me.

The other major one, and one I've seen several other reviews mention, is the abrupt nature of the romance. Marina and Andrew meet each other - as far as I can tell - only a few times, and he comes across to her as rather pompous and condescending. I did enjoy the fact that Marina found healing something that was meaningful to her, and I could see the two of them developing a great working relationship that could turn into romance, but it was really out of left field and abrupt to have her decide that she "must have fallen in love without realising it".

I felt that there was no narrative reason that Marina needed a romance to give her impetus to get herself home. She spent a lot of the novel grieving and in despair over being separated from her guardians, who she now knows have come to rescue her - why can't her desperation to get back to THEM be what she needs to inspire her?

Plus - as with other novels in this series - the super evil antagonist is defeated with hardly any input from our heroine, especially not the satisfying defeat I really wanted. I wanted Marina to confront Arachne about what she did and have a victory, but nope, never happened.

At the end of the day, I don't think I'll bother re-reading this one.