Gateway by Sharon ShinnMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
3 1/2 stars, actually.
Gateway is the story of Daiyu, a Chinese-American teenager who buys a ring at a fair in St. Louis, MO, and ends up in a world called Jia the instant she walks under the St. Louis Arch. She's been brought there to infiltrate the upper echelons of the local Han society and get close enough to the charming prime minister that she can slap a bracelet on his wrist and send him back to his own world before he can do any more damage on Jia. During her training, she falls in love with a young stonepicker called Kalen, who is the only person she's certain she can trust.
This is the first of Sharon Shinn's books set partially in our world--specifically modern-day St. Louis. I found it a little difficult to get into the story for some reason (most likely because I ended up reading in such short chunks), and I thought the characters were a little less well developed than usual. But the story gets quite exciting by the end, and I did enjoy the book overall. I just had a hard time believing in the romance between Daiyu & Kalen, and I wish Aurora & Ombri's characters had been more three-dimensional.
For reader's advisory purposes, the main doorway was story. Character was probably intended to be the secondary doorway.
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