Tome of the Undergates (Aeons' Gate, #1)

by Sam Sykes

Lenk can barely keep control of his mismatched adventurer band at the best of times (Gariath the dragon man sees humans as little more than prey, Kataria the Shict despises most humans, and the humans in the band are little better). When they're not insulting each other's religions they're arguing about pay and conditions.

So when the ship they are travelling on is attacked by pirates things don't go very well. They go a whole lot worse when an invincible demon joins the fray. The demon steals the Tome of the Undergates - a manuscript that contains all you need to open the undergates. And whichever god you believe in you don't want the undergates open. On the other side are countless more invincible demons, the manifestation of all the evil of the gods, and they want out.

Full of razor-sharp wit, characters who leap off the page (and into trouble) and plunging the reader into a vivid world of adventure this is a fantasy that kicks off a series that could dominate the second decade of the century.

• ISBN10: 0575090308
• ISBN13: 9780575090309
• Publish Date: 14 April 2011 (first published 1 January 2010)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: GB
• Imprint: Gollancz
• Format: Paperback (B-Format (198x129 mm))
• Pages: 704
• Language: English

Reviews

[wyvernfriend]

Didn't really keep me reading, I was quite willing, several times, to walk away. It's not a terrible read, but I just didn't care about what happened to the characters and didn't really care if they survived or not.

It's a story about a group of mismatched adventurers who are caught up in the hunt for a mysterious tome which is bringing them into contact with some of the powers of the world (one of the characters keeps talking about how there aren't gods, so I'm using powers, cause it's not clear what these folk are). I occasionally got confused about who amongst the extended characters was who.

Also, unless it's a race attribute, hairless legs aren't a gender sign, they're a sign of societal expectations in the 20th and 21st Western Society, and while, yes, women warriors who go barelegged may remove hair, it would be more akin to cyclists today who do the same to try to prevent infection. You can't tell gender from bare legs, hair length or whether or not they wore skirts (let me introduce you to some ancient greeks...)

Overall, not terrible, but didn't engage me and while I'm vaguely interested in reading the sequels, I'm not rushing out to check if it's in stock in work, and I'm definitely not hunting for it to buy.