**This review may contain a spoiler or two**
First off, I’d like to say that The Gatekeeper’s Sons is the first book in the Gatekeeper’s trilogy. Also, I won all three books in a contest, and they have been signed by the author.


Now…on with my review.

The Gatekeeper’s Sons is about a 15 year old girl named Therese. It starts out with Therese leaving a college with her parents; her mother had been celebrated for some sort of antidote. As they are in the car getting ready to leave, Therese sees a man’s face in the window. But no one else does. Then gunshots ring out, and her father takes off. he ends up swerving the car off a bridge and into the water. Therese’s mother has been hit by a bullet, and even though she tries to save her parents, she cannot. They drown, and before Therese blacks out, she sees someone swimming towards her.

After that, the book delves into Greek mythology, using two gods that aren’t usually discussed or very well known: Thanatos and Hypnos, both sons of Hades.

Therese is in a coma, but she meets Hypnos in her dreams. He finds Therese fascinating and wants to make out with her. She refuses, but then she sees her parents on a ferry with another boy. That boy is Hypnos’s brother, Thanatos, the god of Death. Still believing she’s in a dream, she wraps her arms around Than and kisses him. But because he’s the god of Death, being around him will kill Therese, so both brothers have to let her go back to the waking world.

Now out of the coma, Therese realizes that her parents really, truly are dead, and she ends up going back home with her aunt Carol, who has agreed to take care of her.

Meanwhile, Thanatos goes to his father, Hades, and asks if he can give up his duties as the god of Death and become human so he can try and win Therese’s heart and make her his queen. Hades agrees to give Than 40 days, while making Hypnos take over Than’s duties.

Than ends up working for Therese’s friend Jen at her barn. Therese, who is also helping out, is immediately drawn to Than, but thinks she’s being ridiculous believing that she already knows him or that he’s the god of Death.

Slowly, but surely, things start to click with her, though, and she realizes that the Greek gods really are real. But then comes the hard part. With the help of Than’s sisters, the Furies, Therese must avenge her parents’ death by killing the man who had them killed.

She earns gifts from certain gods and goddesses because of her kindness to nature and animals, but when the time comes to face off with  the murderer, she realizes that perhaps she isn’t cut out to be a goddess of Death after all.

There is a lot more to the book, but I don’t want to give it all away. I found it fascinating, although I did think the romance with Than was just a little rushed. After the ending, though, I thought a bit differently.

The ending did remind me slightly of The Hunger Games, but only because it was a ‘kill or be killed’ sort of event Therese had to be involved in, and the gods and goddesses were merely spectators, only allowed to give yes or no answers in response to Therese’s prayers to them.

Eva Pohler does seem to have a firm grasp on the mythology, and even though her interpretations of the gods may be different than yours, it’s definitely well written and researched. I enjoyed it immensely.

If you’re a fan of Greek mythology and like reading about gods you normally wouldn’t see as main characters, I’d say give this book a whirl. I’m currently reading the second book and will be reviewing that as soon as I finish.