Book Review: Children of the Serpent Gate

Sarah Ash’s third installment to her trilogy “The Tears of Artamon”, follows the events in Prisoner of the Iron Tower. The Drakhouls (essentially ancient dragon spirits) have been released, and are now attaching themselves to various human hosts, transforming them into beings of immense power. The drawback to their power is that overuse requires replenishment in the form of the blood of an innocent child. Each Drakhoul also has a child guardian (the Children of the Serpent Gate as noted in the title), who’s lifeforce is drawn upon to keep the Drakhouls in the world. The story mostly follows Gavril Nagarian, one of those who have been attached to a Drakhoul and who has been the main character throughout the trilogy. It chronicles his struggles to stay alive and prevent the more powerful daemons from entering his world. Sarah Ash does a good job of writing, as I was really caught up in this book, although half the time, I really didn’t like where the plot was going. Anyways, this was a far better book than the second installment, and was a satisfying ending. The only tough part was that there were too many characters to keep track of, which made things extremely difficult at times to follow (which is the same problem I have with Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series). If you’ve read the first two, obviously read this… otherwise, probably not the best fantasy series to start with… read some George R.R. Martin or Terry Goodkind first… (7/10).