A review by adancewithbooks
The Pomegranate Gate by Ariel Kaplan

adventurous mysterious slow-paced

3.5

  Thank you to Erewhon Books and Netgalley for the review copy in exchange for an honest review. This does not change my opinion in anyway.

The Pomegranate Gate is a slow build portal fantasy that is set in a time where the Jews were persecutated. Be converted or exiled. It creates a jarring but realistic backdrop to a more whimsical tale in a different world. 

I feel very conflicted about this book. In places the story and writing were very compelling and I found the book hard to put down. But in other places the story was bogged down by a drawn out narrative and too much details in one place of the story. There were many tiny switch scenes that could have been combined. It would have centered the book better and I would have been able to settle into a character better. Instead we switched between every scene. And every switch between our two main characters meant switching between the worlds. 

While I love a good world building there were so many mentions of places and people, I found it hard to keep up. Some places were called the same thing in both worlds and then there were other names for others. We get the queen and rulers mentioned a lot but as we don't even meet the queen in 'our world' it was hard to picture where everything fit. 

Having said that, I found it interesting to learn about the magic and this world through Toba and learing of this dream world through Navalny. There were a lot of compelling magic and politic bits that grabbed me in certain moments of the story. 

The characters, Toba and Navalny were mostly decent but I didn't always find them compelling enough. I was actually more invested in two side characters. Old granny who we learned almost nothing off. But her character really helped make Naftaly's story interesting to read. I can only imagine what we will learn of her in next installments. And on Toba's side there was Barsilay, who was a bit flamboyant and created some tension and push in there. 

I did care a little more for Naftaly who was genuinely just a good guy. But his motivation to have to find Toba was weak at best. The lengths he went through to get her back while he barely even knew her, felt weird in times. Adding in her grandmother into his story pretty much said that. 

I struggled more with Toba, especially once she got split into two persons and especially one of them was really jarring. They kept talking about one being the original and the other the copy while personality wise it was pretty clear they were split. The 'original' Toba became a little whiny and quick to tears while the 'copy' Toba was more hardened and pushed through things to get what she wanted. 

Despite being conflicted I am still interested in reading on with this series. I am especially curious what will happen between Navalny and Barsilay and to hopefully learn more about old granny. 
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