The Golden City by John Twelve Hawks (The Fourth Realm Trilogy: Book 3)

Struggling to protect the legacy of his Traveller father, Gabriel faces troubling new questions and relentless threats. His brother Michael, now firmly allied with the enemy, pursues his ambition to wrest power from Nathan Boone, the calculating leader of the Brethren. And Maya, the Harlequin warrior pledged to protect Gabriel at all costs, is forced to make a choice that will change her life forever.

Maya is stuck in the first realm, also known as Hell, and Gabriel is determined to get her out but he has to juggle this with his responsibilities as the Traveller and the movement that he has brought into being.

While Gabriel tackles the challenge of rescuing the woman he loves from the first realm, Michael is busy as he moves his way up through the Brethren ranks where he has learnt to play the game well. After months of contact Michael decides that it is time to go and visit the realm that has been feeding the Brethren the information that is has used to create a quantum computer.

One of the most interesting aspects of this book is the world surrounding the Harlequins. While, through the previous two books we are told that the Harlequins are there, it is not until The Golden City that we find out what it means to be a Harlequin in the modern world as Maya starts to lose her way and Hollis is increasingly drawn into the fold.

The whole story is infused with a feeling that the ending is going to be big and even the tedium of the fruitless searches for Matthew Corrigan in the other realms keeps you thinking that it will all be for something. In The Golden City both the Brethren and the Traveller start building up their forces and put their plans into play. It helps that as the story starts to become global, with forays into Asia and Africa, you get to understand the true scope of the Brethren’s power.

By the end of the book you feel like the ending will truly make an impact but I found the end rather anti-climatic and, in the case of one character, rather clichéd. If you are the philosophical kind then the ending will truly make you think about the way that the world is going, and you will find yourself pondering it for some time after you have put the book down. If you prefer reading books full of dramatic-action then this book will probably be a bit of a disappointment to you.

8/10 I found the end rather anti-climatic and, in the case of one character, rather clich�d.