As if it had heard my small grumbles about the previous book, this felt a lot more personal, so that was satisfying. Part of that is to do with developments in the story, and part of that is because I felt more confident that my interpretation of Tremaine’s character.

She doesn’t easily reveal certain feelings to people around her -- and doesn’t always understand or identify those emotions privately to herself. So one has to look at the pattern of her behaviour and read between the lines. I ended up enjoying that subtlety.

This was a tense and satisfying conclusion (and there’s more I could say, except, spoilers).

His expression said plainly that if she thought this was easy, she was crazy. He told her, “I don’t know what’s in your head, but when you get over it, I’ll be here.” ( )

I love Martha Wells' various takes on gender throughout her books, and this series in no exception. Tremaine is a great heroine. I love how she falls into every sort of danger and then just fearlessly kicks ass. I also love that she is basically never the emotionally competent one in any of her relationships. ( )

This book is the third and final novel in Martha Well’s Fall of Ile-Rein trilogy, a fantasy series with portals to multiple worlds, airships, and invaders from another world. It’s also a series that you need to read in order. I’ll potentially be including spoilers for earlier books in this review, so head over to my review of the first book, The Wizard Hunters, if you’re unfamiliar with the series.

Using the spheres and their new knowledge of other worlds, Tremaine and her friends have new hope of saving Ile-Rein from the Gardier. They have their sights set on Lodun, the besieged city of wizards. But the quest to rescue Lodun leads them to places stranger than they could have imagined.

Martha Wells doesn’t write comedic fantasy, but her work nonetheless always manages to make me laugh. I think it’s because her humor always comes from the characters and their interactions with each other. Plus, there’s a lot of sources for humor with the culture clashes between worlds — just look at Tremaine’s marriage to Ilias! Although my favorite has to be Gerald and his reactions to the antics of the others. He reminds me a tad of Stone from her Raksura series.

I believe that each book in a series should expand on the world in some way, and The Gate of Gods definitely does this. While trying to develop a new type of gate, Tremaine and the rest of the group find a set of ruins in Ilias’s world that get to the heart of the magical gates and show a new side to these worlds, their history, and the Gardier themselves.

I sometimes could get secondary characters confused, but over the course of this series I’ve become increasingly attached to the main cast. I love Tremaine’s prickliness for one. I was also thrilled with the return of Nicolas in the last book, since I enjoyed him so much in Death of the Necromancer. I really want to read more about Nicolas and what he was doing during all these series. Hmm, maybe it’s time to get to that Ile-Rein short story collection I have on hand…

The beginning might have been a bit slow, but by the end I couldn’t put The Gate of Gods down. It’s a satisfying conclusion to a solid fantasy series. It speaks to the strength of Wells’s capabilities as a writer that this is actually one of her middling works. She’s just that fantastic.

Originally posted on The Illustrated Page. ( )

A satisfying end to a trilogy that began badly. The plot ramps up the stakes and excitement, but Wells never lets it overshadow her characters. Good, well-written fantasy.
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A fun series. Overall I enjoyed it, but I was disappointed to learn what was behind the Gardier's plans and the sorcerer crystals. It felt like the worldbuilding had been leading toward something more complex.

Time to read the earlier book(s?) set in this universe! ( )