The Fallen Gatekeepers

I was excited to get my hands on this book after reading the first one in the series. I would strongly suggest that readers start with the first book, since the second book builds on the events and characters of the first without taking the time to re-explain things. In other words, this is not a stand alone.

Again, the author builds a rich world full of interesting characters and lots of action. Although the main focus is on Junya and Shoko, the other members of Junya's group and several other side characters are not shoved off. This gives a nice rounded story with several layers, which make it a joy to read.

The world building is even better in this book than in the first. Small confusions are avoided as the world and layers of mystery and information flow smoothly and form an intricate world. There's action and magic and a wonderful amount of adventure, but this doesn't over power the emotional end. The thoughts and feelings of the characters come across clearly, add depth, and make this feel more like a young adult read than the first book did.

A variety of cultures and countries are whisked through in these pages, and, unfortunately, this could have been better done. The visits to each country are quick and give little insight on real life or true cultural aspects, but rather stick to stereotypes. This superficial sweep over also seeps into several character attitudes, especially in the way females are handled.

All in all, this is a solid fantasy read for teens and holds all the adventure, magic and tension to keep the reader hooked until the very last page.

When I requested this book I didn't realize that it was the second book in a series I only saw the word Japanese and was pounding the request button to death as I love anything to do with Japan or Japanese culture and history in modern YA literature. It became apparent in the first several chapters that this novel was going to be a little difficult to follow for me as I hadn't read the first book. The book jumps in without any real introduction to the main characters, the world-building, or the events that led up to this point. Despite this, it did get easier to pick up on things as the novel progressed. The plot itself was interesting with enough twists to keep the reader going which is needed especially in fantasy novels, which were well constructed and held my attention avidly. There are several underlying themes that add additional layers to this story making it seem more 3-D than other fantasy novels I have read in the past. The only negative I have about this novel is the dubious motivations of some of the characters for example, Junya is also obnoxious about money and a huge hypocrite as he has a large amount of money thanks to the events of the previous book I believe and he throws huge amounts of money away just because he can and then he goes on to talk about wealth inequality and how it isn’t fair that a small minority has so much money – despite being part of that small minority himself. Apart from this the Fallen Gatekeepers was very interesting and I will be re-reading this after I read the Gatekeeper's son for the first time.