I’m thrilled to be one of the hosts for today’s stop on the blog tour for The Thirteenth Gate by Kat Ross, Book 2 in her exciting Dominion Mystery series. You can read my review below. To check out the other great bloggers on the tour and see what they thought, click here.
Plus there’s a giveaway (US & Canada only, sorry!) with a chance for one lucky person to win a signed paperback copy of Book #1 in the Dominion Mystery series, The Daemoniac.
To enter click here.
About the Book
Winter 1888. At an asylum in the English countryside, a man suspected of being Jack the Ripper kills an orderly and flees into the rain-soaked night. His distraught keepers summon the Lady Vivienne Cumberland – who’s interviewed their patient and isn’t sure he’s a man at all. An enigmatic woman who guards her own secrets closely, Lady Vivienne knows a creature from the underworld when she sees one. And he’s the most dangerous she’s ever encountered. As Jack rampages through London, Lady Vivienne begins to suspect what he’s searching for. And if he finds it, the doors to purgatory will be thrown wide open…
Across the Atlantic, an archaeologist is brutally murdered after a Christmas Eve gala at the American Museum of Natural History. Certain peculiar aspects of the crime attract the interest of the Society for Psychical Research and its newest investigator, Harrison Fearing Pell. Is Dr. Sabelline’s death related to his recent dig in Alexandria? Or is the motive something darker? As Harry uncovers troubling connections to a serial murder case she’d believed was definitively solved, two mysteries converge amid the grit and glamour of Gilded Age New York. Harry and Lady Vivienne must join forces to stop an ancient evil. The key is something called the Thirteenth Gate. But where is it? And more importantly, who will find it first?
| Format: | ebook | Publisher: | Acorn Publishing | Pages: | 350 |
| Publication: | 26th Jun 2017 | Genre: | Historical Mystery, YA |
Purchase Links*
Amazon.co.uk ǀ Amazon.com ǀ Barnes & Noble ǀ Kobo ǀ iTunes
*links provided for convenience, not as part of any affiliate programme
Find The Thirteenth Gate on Goodreads
My Review
‘In the universe…there are things that are known, and things that are unknown, and in between, there are doors.’
What do you get if you take an intricately plotted, suspenseful historical mystery set in 19th century London and New York and add ghouls and daemons? An enthralling, wonderfully entertaining read, that’s what! I’m not much into paranormal or fantasy but I really enjoyed this book because the fantasy elements were subtly woven into a satisfyingly complex historical mystery.
Lady Vivienne makes a feisty, idiosyncratic and resourceful heroine alongside her companion, Alec Lawrence. Their bond is symbiotic in nature, forged and developed over a great expanse of time with each contributing skills and abilities that make them an effective fighting force against the powers of evil. As Lady Vivienne explains, ‘We are the light against the darkness’.
Harrison (Harry) Pell and her friend, John Weston, specialise much more in solving the crimes of this world – think Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson, but of course they were only fictional, weren’t they? However, in The Thirteenth Gate, Harry and John are forced to confront malefactors from a distinctly more shadowy realm. When Lady Vivienne, Alec, Harry and John join forces, nothing can stop them – or can it?
This is the second book in the series. (Click here to download Book #1, The Daemoniac, which is currently free from Amazon.) Although there are lots of references to earlier events in The Thirteenth Gate, this didn’t affect my enjoyment and the book works perfectly well as a standalone. Except….that having read this you’re definitely going to want to read the first one (I certainly do), so why not start there? In fact, as the author explains in her afterword, the story of Lady Vivienne and Alec starts much further back than that, in The Fourth Element trilogy. Book #1 of the trilogy, The Midnight Sea, is currently free to download from Amazon – click here to get hooked.
I received a review copy courtesy of the author and Xpresso Book Tours in return for an honest and unbiased review.
In three words: Compelling, suspenseful, imaginative
About the Author
Kat Ross worked as a journalist at the United Nations for ten years before happily falling back into what she likes best: making stuff up. She lives in Westchester with her kid and a few sleepy cats. Kat is also the author of the dystopian thriller Some Fine Day (Skyscape, 2014) about a world where the sea levels have risen sixty meters. She loves magic, monsters and doomsday scenarios. Preferably with mutants.
Connect with Kat
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About the Book
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