Friday 2 September 2016

Book Review: The Last Gatekeeper by Katy Haye

The Last Gatekeeper – Katy Haye

*Warning – may contain spoilers*

Author: Katy Haye
Publisher: Smashwords
First published: 2014
Edition: eBook
Pages: 233

Blurb: (Taken from Goodreads)
               Two worlds. One queen determined to rule both. And one teen girl who stands in her way.
Zanzibar MacKenzie knows she’s a freak. She has EHS – electrical hypersensitivity – which leaves her trying to live a Stone Age life in the twenty-first century: no internet, no phone, no point really.
On her seventeenth birthday she discovers the truth: she can’t stand electricity because she’s half-fae, and her mixed-blood makes her the only person on Earth able to control the gates that link the fae and human worlds.
With the help of Thanriel, an angel charged with keeping the worlds in balance, and Cal, an exiled fae, Zan – the girl who can’t flip a light switch – must now learn to control the elemental powers she never knew she had in order to defeat a queen bent on destruction.

History of my copy: I was given a free copy of The Last Gatekeeper through YA Bound Book Tours in exchange for an honest review.

The idea behind The Last Gatekeeper is ingenious. I thoroughly enjoyed the story and, for the most part, how it was executed. However, some bits were laughable, including Thanriel. I couldn’t take anything involving him seriously. He felt entirely unnecessary and only included to create a love interest. This was a shame as it single-handedly ruined what had the potential to be a fantastic book.

Plot: The Last Gatekeeper follows Zanzibar, a girl who discovers that she is half-Fane and is the last gatekeeper alive. She, with the help of Cal, Thanriel and some Fane rebels, must close the three remaining gates on Fane to stop the Queen from destroying Earth.
         The problem is, up until her 17th birthday, she didn’t even know Fanes existed. So, on top of saving the world, she must discover who she is and what she can do.

Setting: On the whole, Haye is great at describing the setting and what is going on. She contrasts Earth and Fane well and does some great world-building without drowning the reader with information. It is certainly a world I would love to visit again.

Characters: Zan is actually pretty cool for a lead character and doesn’t suffer much from the ‘I must be a super powerful female’ that ruins many YA books. Although her Fane power does happen to be pretty powerful, she stays grounded. Right from the beginning, she is an outsider and seems to cope well with that. She takes the responsibility of saving the world but stays human and relatable throughout the whole journey.
               Cal is another intriguing character although I saw that he was the Queen’s son from the moment we first met him, so that was rather predictable. I would love to read about how he turned against his mother and how he ended up exiled as I sense that there is a fantastic story behind it all.
               Thanriel is the other main character, a Talvarine who Zan falls in love with uncharacteristically quickly, and who ends up fathering Zan’s child. The whole Thanriel-Zan thing was utterly ridiculous and unnecessary and I just couldn’t help but laugh whenever they were together. Perhaps he will have a use in the series besides being a love interest, but for now I’m not sold.

To read or not to read: Read. Although the romance brought my rating down quite a bit, The Last Gatekeeper is otherwise a fantastic story and a must read. Without Thanriel and the stupid twist that Zan ends up pregnant, it would be a 5 star but, unfortunately, the romance is just too strong, resulting in a mere 3 stars.


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