My stress levels rise thanks to R.E. Palmer's 'The Gates of Dawn'

Title: The Gates of Dawn

Series: The Never Dawn (#3)

Author: R.E. Palmer

Genre: YA Sci-Fi / Dystopian

Publisher: FrontRunner Publications

Date: August 17 2017

Pages: 398 pages

Buy The Gates of Dawn

What Goodreads has to say:

Banished to the surface, Noah and his team struggle to survive in the harsh climate and are forced to make a difficult decision. In their quest to see the first dawn, they make a shocking discovery about their past that could help Noah bring Mother's cruel regime to an end.

What I have to say:

You know that feeling when you're nearing the end of a book, and there's maybe ten pages left, and everything is a complete mess and you're like, "how the heck can we salvage this situation? Ain't no way. Everyone's gonna die."

Ladies and gentlemen, may I present R.E. Palmer's The Gates of Dawn. 

This book was so stressful. Not only at the end when I was like, but wait, are they not going to win after all???? No, this book was just stressful all the way through. Like--Is this person going to die? No, they can't die! I really really like them! (Hi Reuben). Shoot, is Noah going to die? Noah can't die, he's the narrator and we still have three-fourths of the book left! But wait, is he dead? Crap, maybe everyone's going to die.

It kept me invested, it kept me guessing, and it kept me holding my breath right up to the very end. The characters' pain was my pain. Their small victories filled me with joy. Their shocking discoveries induced my horror.

Before moving on, can we take just a moment to appreciate this masterful opening paragraph:

"It turns out you can't touch the sky. I guess I really should have known it wasn't possible. But I mustn't be critical of my younger self. In every picture I'd drawn in the nursery, I'd colored the top third in blue and left the page blank until the green line of the fields where I would be playing happily with Mother."

At the beginning of The Gates of Dawn, Noah, Rebekah, and a handful of their friends (I use the term loosely because one of them wants Noah dead) are sent down to New Earth by Mother. That should be cause for celebration, right? Yeah, sure, I mean except for the fact that New Earth seems to be a dark, frozen planet incapable of supporting life.

They decide to trek across the planet in search of fertile ground, but it's by no means a smooth journey. Think avalanches, sea storms, and the occasional murder attempt by that person who's not really Noah's friend. In other words, it's truly an adventure.

But what Noah and his "friends" eventually learn on New Earth sends them back to The Ark, in one final attempt to topple "Mother" from her seat of power and save themselves and everyone else still living in The Ark.

While I loved this book, and in fact, the whole series (well done on your first trilogy, R.E. Palmer), I ultimately had a problem with the ending for some reason. Being my usual super helpful self, I'm not sure exactly what that problem was. Of course, it's hard that, oh wait, hold on a sec-

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*WARNING: SPOILERS*

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OK hi. So it's hard that Noah and Rebekah end up separated at the end, and my heart aches for Rebekah who's still stuck under Mother's dominion (though we can hope that Mother is a little nicer now, right?). 

But I don't think that's where my problem with the ending lies. Maybe I wasn't sure exactly what happened at the end--how Noah averted the crisis? Or maybe averting the crisis turned out to be too simple? (Activating the fail-safe by pressing a button.) Maybe I wanted more people to die? IDK.

Or maybe it was the epilogue that fell flat for me. Maybe I needed more trees, or maybe I needed Abraham or Seth to be there. Maybe I needed something more akin to the beautiful moment in this book where Noah looks up at the first sunset he's ever seen and is overcome:

"I blink. A tear runs down my cheek. I can't touch the sky, but it can touch me."

All in all, though, this was a great story and I enjoyed it immensely. Even though I think the final book was ultimately my least favorite of the three, simply because I didn't feel it was quite as masterful as the first two (The Never Dawn and Cloud Cuckoo), it was still a fantastic, gripping dystopian adventure.

Yeah, it was heck of stressful. But that's how I like 'em.

Rating: 

(like... 3 and a half...? Can we get half a tree?)

Until tomorrow.