Ebony Gate is an action-packed urban fantasy Asian Diaspora story set in Chinatown, San Francisco. There’s dragon magic, clan politics, and a whole lot of Asian culture. I received a physical arc from one of the authors, Julia Vee and an audiobook from Macmillan Audio through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. I ended up co-reading the book as seeing that award winning Natalie Naudus was the narrator, I had to experience both at the same time.

This book reads exactly as you would imagine an action film in novel format. It’s packed with well written prose, phenomenal fight scenes and a take-no-shits FMC. Sprinkled on top of that is the beauty that is Asian culture, an intricate magic system, subtle queer representation, and the struggles of making a home in an unfamiliar city.

The pacing is quite unique for an action-packed novel because the whole book happens in a span of two days and while the action scenes are numerous, there is a lot of internal dialogue and quite a bit of musing from the main character. We see a lot of detail into every action that the character ends up doing in the short span of time that the novel takes place.

I flitted between physically reading the action scenes so I could imagine every amazing aspect that Vee and Bebelle illustrated while listening to Naudus narrate Emiko’s perspective in between all the fight scenes. Honestly that was such a perfect way for me to enjoy this book.

If urban fantasy and the above descriptions intrigue you this would absolutely love this book. My rating of comes from an entirely personal experience and preference – I did not like the main character and because so much of the book involves following this singular character throughout every action she made (you can liken it to picking a character from a RPG game) – the book didn’t work as well as I had hoped for me.

I felt that the main character was unnecessarily cruel and while there were a lot of descriptions into the day-to-day activities, I felt like there wasn’t enough introspection into the main character’s thought process that I wasn’t able to understand her for who she was as a person rather than as a plot tool. I felt insight into her motivations were lacking so I wasn’t truly able to empathize with her or her situation. I am no stranger to unlikable or morally grey main characters, but in this case I did not enjoy the character we spent all out time with.

However, this book is a well written action-packed fantasy that while might not be entirely to my taste, it might just work for you so I recommend you giving it a go.

The synopsis was promising unfortunately I just couldn't get into it. The pacing and info dumping of the book was my main issue because it quickly became such a slog to get through. The overall plot was intriguing but the characters were very lackluster. Also, since there were so many characters, I couldn't really connect with them or even remember half of them and most of the time I found myself wondering when the book would pick up even 80% into it. The book definitely did a lot of setting up for future installments with the plot driven storyline but I prefer more character driven stories so that might just be a personal gripe of me.

Ebony Gate is an action packed adventure following Emiko, who has moved to San Francisco to separate herself from her past. However, escaping her past is not quite as easy as moving a continent away. The magic system itself is spellbinding, eight (or nine) dragons were exiled from their realm long ago, and their human descendants have hoard talents and magical artifacts that still connect them to the lost realm. Emiko is drawn back into the world of magic that she tried to escape when a Shinigami shows up and requires her help. This was an engaging story that is clearly an introduction to something much larger. My only critique is that sometimes Emiko's internal narrative can be a little much sometimes, though the only time this really happened was during action sequences. Many of these internal monologues provide important information to the reader. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this novel and the opportunity to listen to the audiobook. The narration was engaging, clear, and truly brought Emiko's voice to life.

I had a great time with this book! I am a huge fan of urban fantasy and am always looking for new books in the genre to try so I was excited to get started with this book. I thought that this was a very good start to a promising series and once I started reading, I did not want to stop. I found this book to be very exciting and I am so glad that I decided to give it a try.

Emiko is from a very powerful family but she is trying to live a quiet life importing antiques. She is known as the Butcher to many because she served as the Blade to the Soong clan. When a blood debt is called in, she is given the task of recovering the Ebony Gate and has her work cut out for her in this exciting tale. I couldn’t wait to see how she would accomplish everything in the time frame she had to work with. I thought that the world-building in this book was very well done and I was quite impressed by the colorful cast of characters, especially Emiko.

I listened to the audiobook and thought that Natalie Naudus did a fantastic job with the story. I have had a lot of luck with this narrator in the past and thought that she did a fantastic job of bringing the story to life. I loved the various voices that she used for the cast of characters and I thought that she was able to bring just enough excitement and emotion to her reading. I do believe that her narration added to my enjoyment of this story.

I would recommend this book to others. I thought that this was an incredibly unique and entertaining story featuring characters that were easy to cheer on. I cannot wait to see what adventures Emiko will face in the next installment.

I received a review copy of this book from Macmillan Audio and Tor Books.

An enjoyable urban fantasy with a throwback feel.

I can’t help but feel nostalgic when I stumble upon a snarky loner female main character who doesn’t trust anyone in an urban fantasy - it takes me back to the early days of Kate Daniels and Rachel Morgan.

The world was interesting and I liked the magic system, although there were parts I wished had been explained in a bit more detail.

I did find that the story didn’t necessarily grab my attention but I’ve also been listening to in it much smaller chunks than I would like, by necessity, so that could be my fault rather than the narrative’s.

Overall I enjoyed Ebony Gate and will continue the series.

Talk about fire! I do not remember what made me stop and look at this book, but I am happy my nosiness won this round.

I ate this book up in two days. And yes, you guessed it, I got to thank the audiobook gods for this one. The listening session is clocked at 14 hours and some change, so you know the book is thique. I am ecstatic to take another audio dive with Natalie Naudus. Her name may sound familiar as she did the reading for Daughter of the Moon Goddess. I’m comfortable knowing a familiar voice dominated this read because I can’t see anybody else owning this story better than Naudus.

The idea that Vee and Bebelle can create a fantastical narrative, filled with Asian folklore, secret societies, and ancient prophecies set in modern Chinatown in San Fransico, was a well-done blended family. The beginning was slow, and it took me a second to figure out the time setting wasn’t futuristic.

I like the Butcher of Beijeing's character. She's basically the BabaYaga of these streets, but could tell she wanted more out of life. I loved seeing her dynamic with other characters. We got to see a different version of her anytime a new person was introduced, and I love that it shows the complexities in her.

I rated 5 stars. Honestly, the book was good enough to where it can stand as a standalone, but I'm riding out for the trilogy.

2.5 stars rounded up.

There were lots of cool ideas in this book. I saw another reviewer say that "This is a good story, sandwiched between a slow start and a drawn out ending," and I think they hit the nail on the head.

You follow Emiko, a former Blade of a Jia-ren clan and the Butcher of Beijing (we never find out how she earned this title, but nobody lets her forget that she is revered and hated for being the Butcher). She is now attempting to make a new start in San Francisco, but is foiled when a debt her mother owes drags her into doing the bidding of a death god. She has two days to help it do a seemingly impossible task.

This was a really interesting premise, and I was initially invested in Emiko's story and the magical world she inhabited. I liked some of the side characters and the multicultural aspect of San Francisco's Chinatown and little Tokyo.

For a story that focuses on events that supposedly span only two days, the pace was incredibly slow, and I often felt that there was no way all of these events were occurring within the implied time frame. There was a lot of needless detail in fight scenes that eventually went nowhere. Certain words and phrases were repeated often and didn't serve any purpose.

I do enjoy a story when the protagonist fails in order to learn and grow. This was sadly not one of them. Emiko blunders so many of her tasks (usually physical battles, which are meant to be her expertise), and only ever seems to succeed by fluke. It was frustrating, and I almost DNF'd this at the 80% mark.

The narration was well done, and I enjoyed the different intonation and voices the narrator provided. It definitely brought another dimension to the world of the Ebony Gate. The Cantonese pronunciation was rather off, but seeing as the authors for some reason included Japanese, Chinese and Cantonese lines, I feel like it was a bit of an impossible ask to expect a narrator to be fluent in all three dialects/languages.

In conclusion, I wish this had been put through another round or two of editing. The prose was meandering and the pacing off. Key plot points meant to be huge revelations were incredibly predictable and perhaps hinted at a bit too much. This disappointed me because there was so much in this book that could have potentially worked (cities imbuing their guardians with magic; magical, qi-based powers; a Foo lion charm animated to protect the wearer)!! But the execution felt clumsy and a chore to read. Sadly, this isn't one I'll recommend.

Perhaps listening to an audiobook of this was a poor choice...

As somebody who isn't all that familiar with Asian names, martial arts, and Traditional Chinese Medicine - I might have been better served reading this book. I say that because my retention is better when it's read than when it's heard.

So with that said, listening to Emiko being fully immersed in San Francisco's Asian communities was really challenging. There are magical people and regular people, and the magical people are associated with chaperone families... And they're known by their hoards and talents... And those talents are of different calibers of power with different auras... And just, ugh. It's a lot. It's a lot easier to grasp if you can remember all the different family names, which I couldn't. It's my hope that the physical book has a diagram depicting all the names associated with the different clans. I know I would surely need it.

The actual main character is very interesting, and so is the potential love interest Adam. My biggest complaint is that Ebony Gate sets Adam up as a main character in this book AND HE ISN'T. He has three scenes that I can recall: the beginning, the auction, and the end. Instead, the main male is this guy named Freddy who is a surfing pot head - who is really not a guy that I care about at all. Yes, Freddy is a good guy and is well written, but I just did not care. Fiona? I cared more about her, and I hope we see more of her. (And for all that is holy, can we stop with the MiMi thing?) Her ex, however, annoyed me. I'm not certain what his presence was all about. I honestly would have been satisfied if he wasn't in the book at all. Was he there just to make a complicated book more complicated?

That's right. This book was complicated. At least, it was for somebody like me. The magic system was just far too much on the first read. I think I would have been fine if it was explained properly in the beginning, and not unraveled at moments of convenience. "Oh, this guy's aura is blue - that means he has an ice power! That means he can do this... And is this level of standing in the clan..." I don't learn that way. I like to learn it all upfront and then be reminded as we go through.

The plot, itself, was convoluted. Technically, I understand it had two main areas: the Ghost and the missing gate. And as you might assume, those two were connected. How it plays out, however, is unnecessarily difficult. A logical person would have approached the Ghost completely differently. Plus - the Blade versus the Sentinel? We were never given the proper oomph to understand why she was so adverse to becoming the Sentinel. She clearly had the proper know-how from when she was the Blade and she clearly cares about the city. Soo..?

I hope that the second book spends time on the important stuff. This book had a lot of repetition (being called MiMi, refusing the Sentinel, and being reminded of being the Blade). It also had a really long ending. The big battle scene happened and then the wind down dragged on and on... I accidentally tuned out half of it because I lost interest. (Don't worry, I came back in time for Adam.)

All in all, it's a real shame because I want to love this book. I love Adam and Emiko. I LOVE Bao (I think that's how her guardian is spelled). He takes on a lion shape, and I absolutely wanted more of him. I also enjoyed the death god. I also love how kit-kats and dumplings are her main source of fuel in her adventure. Honestly, I feel like I would enjoy Book 2 a LOT more than Ebony Gate. I also think I would get more out of a second read through.

**If you love the concept of this book, but struggle with any of the stuff I mentioned, please get an ebook or a physical copy. Reading it might have made all the difference for me.**

I definitely think this book was worth the read, and I'll be keeping my eyes out for the sequel.
With that said, thanks to NetGalley for giving me the opportunity to read and review this book!

I am rating this a 2.5, but rounding up.

The premise of this book is incredibly promising. In this urban fantasy, magical families co-exist under an uneasy truce as they each shore up their spheres of power and influence. The protagonist, Emiko Soong has a dark troubled past. She once served as the Blade of the Soong Clan but that came to a bloody end as she became the Butcher of Beijing. The story picks up with her living a somewhat ordinary life in San Francisco. Despite trying to keep her head down and luve an average life, the political intrigues and magical threats contine to intrude on her life.

This should be fascinating. I particularly lived the world building and the way magic is woven into the modern world. The problem is with the execution. It felt like most of the book was exposition. Instead of living in this magical modern world, we're given dry instruction on it. Instead of getting to know the characters as they navigate through the story, we get info dumps on them. This really harmed the pacing, especially in moments that should have been high tension since those moments would be inflated with dumps of information that removed all urgency. It was difficult to care about the characters or their plight when the narrative treated even the most dangerous situations as though they were casual interruptions to the info dumping.

Again, I loved the premise and the world building. I might look into the sequel if only for that.

Thank you to Tor, Macmillan Audio, and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I think this might be a case of just not for me? I didn’t really feel any kind of connection to the main character. I had a difficult time getting grounded into the story world. And the pacing of the plot was rather slow in the beginning. All of these things combined and I just wasn’t feeling compelled to continue reading. One particular issue I had was that I listened to the audiobook and there were a lot of non-English words used that I wasn't really able to understand or follow like I would have been able to if I was reading a physical copy. I didn't have any issues with the narrator or narration style itself, just the content and context of the book. I do think there is definitely an audience for this book, it just wasn’t me. I’ve decided not to leave a star rating because I DNF’d it so I don’t think it would be entirely fair. I didn’t hate it or think it was terrible, I just couldn’t get into it. With so many books and so little time… y’all know how it goes. It just wasn’t great for me and there was nothing that made me want to “keep turning the pages” (so to speak since I was listening). I think using John Wick as a descriptor will end up being a huge marketing mistake. Those are some big guns to fill.

I absolutely enjoyed this book! I think the main character has similar vibes as the main character in The Sword of Kaigen. Albeit more isolated. The character doesn’t have friends or family that she is close to. A lot of that is because of her history and what she has been through. We see a lot of her mindset and feelings as the story unfolds. If you don’t like a lot of internal dialog you might not enjoy it as much, but it was a nice change of pace for me. The pace of the novel in general was not quite fast but not necessarily slow either. The entirety of the novel takes place in 48 hours so there are times it’s just the main character thinking through things or reflecting on her past. I can’t wait for the second novel in the series. I’m looking forward to seeing more of the world but also further character dynamics. Oh also the last third of the book reminded me of The City We Became by N. K. Jemisin but fantasy.

Thank you NetGally for the ALC & to the authors for an ARC.

This is hands down my favorite fantasy book this year now. It translated well to audio and I quite enjoyed the reader.

The magic system in this was beautifully written and I loved the roots to in asian dragon mythology as well as the gate. This book was bright and vivid in its roots.

The action was jam packed and really did give those John Wick vibes. I can not recommend this book enough. It was flawless.

This story follows Emiko, also known as the ‘Butcher of Beijing’, as she tries to leave her life of violence behind after moving to San Francisco. However, when the Ebony Gate goes missing, she’s thrown into a world of action, violence and clan politics again in order to fulfil a family debt.

This book had me hooked from the very beginning! It was very fast paced with high stakes. There were a lot of action scenes and the majority of the book took place over a couple of days which really kept the plot moving. I was very intrigued to learn about the magic system and the characters were well fleshed-out.

Emiko as a main character was great! She’s very tough and great at fighting despite wanting to avoid it, yet she also has her flaws and is not portrayed to be a perfect hero. I also liked the side characters and they all seemed distinctive in my mind, rather than them all seeming like copies of each other.

I’m looking forward to future books in this world to learn more about the magic system. Thank you to Macmillan Audio and Netgalley for this advanced copy.

What a great story to immediately be enthralled with. The world building is so unique and interesting, mixed with a protagonist that is unyielding to her personal goals yet stay loyal to those who are important to her. Loved the narrator before, but really enjoyed her cadences for Ebony Gate.

I gave this book 4 stars - but it is really the average of some 3 star and 5 star elements. First I will talk about what the book did really well. I loved the MC. Emiko is a bad-ass who earned her abilities before the beginning of the story without the aid of the magic of her Horde (like a family clan). I like to see a capable heroine who knows what she is capable of and doesn’t spend the book whining. Emiko is haunted by her past but doesn’t let that stop her. The supporting characters in this book are also great - Fiona, Freddie and even the city of San Francisco. I am looking forward to more of this series and I will definitely pick up the next one when it comes out.
Now for what I wasn’t a fan of as much. The pacing of this book is not great. I know that first books in a series often take a while to get going because they have to explain the world and in a fantasy there is often magic to explain too - and I get that. However, this book starts really slowly and spends too much time on minutiae that doesn’t help the world building or character building very much. The middle of the book gets much better, but then the end does drag a bit as well.But now that we have the world and characters in place I think the next book wil be even better!
Thank you to Netgalley and Macmillan audio for an advance listening copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This San Francisco-set Urban Fantasy follows Emiko Soong as she gets sucked back into a world of danger and dragon magic. Emiko has distanced herself from her family and her role as Blade of their clan, as well as her reputation as the "Butcher of Beijing." After two years of establishing a new life in San Francisco, she gets tapped to fulfill an unbreakable family debt and finds herself at the center of a conflict that could endanger all the magical residents of San Francisco, as well as the city itself.

I loved how action-packed this book was and really enjoyed Emiko and the cast of supporting characters, as well as the San Francisco setting. This book has a great sense of place and as someone who grew up in the Bay Area, I really loved seeing the city come to life here. The worldbuilding of the magic in this book was quite complicated and at times pretty confusing or seemingly contradictory. I think listening on audiobook helped me move past some of the more confusing elements, but I definitely think the book would have been stronger if this was pared down a little (or maybe if some points were introduced in book 2 instead).

Overall I had a really fun time with this book and am definitely looking forward to picking up book 2 when it's out!

Thank you to Tor and Netgalley for the ARC!

Ebony Gate was kind of a disappointment writing wise. I thought the story was interesting and the magic system was really unique. I enjoyed that the plot took place over a few days, but the beginning and end of the book dragged on. Emiko was pretty badass and I liked her as a character quite a bit. The writing fell pretty flat, it felt a little juvenile and the dialogue became stilted and awkward at times. It was a fun read, but I wish the execution was a little tighter.

Thanks NetGalley for the audiobook ARC to review!

I'm gonna start off this review by saying that Natalie Naudus is an awesome audiobook narrator, as always. Her ability to bring life to Asian-American FMCs (and the Asian-American experience in general) was one of the reasons why I requested this arc.

The novel was very creative. The setting, San Francisco, was a whole character in itself. I loved how it came alive through the FMC's actions and interactions with the numerous characters and places. I could feel myself actually being there along with the FMC.

The FMC, Emiko, was pretty badass. This is definitely NOT one of those novels where the MC says they're a badass, but there was nothing to show for it. Emiko was a knowledgeable expert when it came to her fighting skills and the novel was well done in that aspect. She also had enough flaws to make her a well-rounded character.

I also loved the overall atmosphere of the story. There was a mixture of East Asian folklore and mythology set in an American city, so it felt like an authentic lived experience. And as an Asian-American, I really appreciated it a lot. Representation seriously matters.

I think my issues with this novel is with its pacing and number of side characters. The pacing was so off throughout the novel. It started out really slow and couldn't seem to find its footing. The action scenes were fast-paced, but the scenes in between lagged. It was strange because the FMC's quest to find the Ebony Gate screamed "URGENT," but the pacing conveyed otherwise.

Also, there were a lot of side characters to keep track of. I did like Freddie and Fiona, and the shinigami was pretty cool. For being an ex, Kamon was actually a badass and a pretty decent guy. But the others fell by the wayside because there really wasn't much to distinguish them apart.

Hopefully, these issues are fixed in the next installment. I'd love to read more from Julia Vee and Ken Bebelle.

Thank you to Macmillan Audio, Tor Books, and NetGalley for this arc.

Honestly this one had me at the tagline that it was a female john wick with dragon magic set in a contemporary San Francisco Chinatown, like what? That’s a hodgepodge magnet of goodness and absolutely lived up to that comparison. This is an urban fantasy filled with magical elements from Asian influences and we follow our main character who is a retired assassin who was mostly known as the butcher of Bejing. She seeks a peaceful existence in San Francisco, but soon finds herself entangled in clan politics and bound to a death god who must restore the Ebony Gate. It’s a very intriguing start to a new series and it's just as unique as it sounds.

A very well written and narrated contemporary fantasy. I enjoyed the story but overall the magic system was a bit confusing.