Review: Hellgate, by Morgan Newquist
Emilia is a recovering party girl, struggling to get her life in order after a bad breakup from a worse relationship. She thought moving in to take care of her grandfather would be a great way to get started.
Until a shapeshifting wolf-demon jumps through her bedroom window.
Deal alert: On the date of this review, Hellgate is only $0.99 on Kindle!
The story
Emilia is like a lot of twenty-something women in the modern day. She’s attracted to the bad boy types and has spent most of her early adulthood partying. When her relationship with asshole biker Alan comes to an abrupt end, she moves in with her grandfather, Robert. Widowed, with creeping dementia, Robert is more than happy to have his Emmy take care of him.
If it sounds like Hellgate by Morgan Newquist is a quaint tale of redemption and delayed coming of age, I can assure you it is anything but quaint. Emilia notices cracks in the façade of normalcy in the neighborhood in the first chapter when Robert runs out of the house to chase away a monster with a plunger. She’s quick to chalk it up to her grandfather’s dementia until she runs into Kai, the inhumanly attractive and motorcycle riding neighbor, who points out that just because Robert has dementia doesn’t mean there isn’t a monster.
Our pink-haired heroine doesn’t know what to make of that and doesn’t have much time to ponder it when Robert has to be taken to the hospital with pneumonia the next night. Even as he’s getting carted to the hospital, the elderly man seems most concerned about the Neighborhood Watch, something Emilia hasn’t taken seriously. She realizes just how important it is when a huge wolf leaps through her bedroom window, a wolf that is barely fazed by a shotgun blast and only relents when Kai shows up and blasts it with a fireball.
Kai brings her up to speed on what the Watch is really about, dealing with supernatural threats. Emilia also learns Kai is a half Fae, her other neighbor Silas can talk to ghosts, the pregnant woman across the street is a witch and to make things even more interesting, the neighborhood is sitting on a literal gate to Hell. Before worrying about that though, Silas, Kai, and Emilia have to figure out how to kill the relentless wolf-demon.
The characters
Emilia is definitely a girl with a few issues. No one has ever trusted her to be responsible and the false comfort of her relationship with Alan was lost when he unceremoniously dumped her stuff on the curb. Having failed so far at being a responsible adult and even at being a carefree party girl, she is desperate to prove herself. That motivation drives her throughout the entire story, pushing her to greater acts of bravery as things progress.
Kai at first seems like exactly the kind of asshole biker Emilia has sworn off. And while he is both of those things, he’s also honest about it and the fact that Fae like him are not completely reliable. He also puts himself on the line for her many times. It also helps that Kai comes with a bit of family angst of his own as they don’t approve of his choice to live as a human.
Silas is a bit of an enigma. Able to communicate with ghosts, he drifts in and out of the story at odd points, apparently following the direction of one ghost or another. He also is apparently frustrated by the lack of human contact brought about by his gift as evidenced by his jealousy of Emilia’s attraction to Kai.
Then of course there is Emilia’s grandfather, Robert. He’s been head of the Neighborhood Watch for years and clearly has the respect of the other people in Strawberry Hollow. Even in his dementia, he maintains a strong sense of purpose and courage, willing to sacrifice himself to save his granddaughter.
The world
Strawberry Hollow seems like a normal, quite little suburban town. Nestled between woods and a busier downtown, the lawns are well kept, the neighbors friendly; it seems like it should be on a postcard. However, Emilia soon discovers that hiding just below the surface is a strange and terrifying underworld of the supernatural. Ghosts linger, certain trees repel beings from another world, Holy Ground really is a safe haven, and circles of mushrooms might actually be gateways to the Fairie Kingdom.
Newquist also drops hints that there is a lot more to Robert’s Neighborhood Watch than a collection of supernatural misfits looking out for each other. It seems the Watch is formally commissioned by something referred to as the Board of Directors. It remains unclear exactly what the nature of the board is, but one thing is certain, Robert does not want them involved, even at the cost of his own life.
These are just hints of a much larger world that I look forward to exploring in the sequel.
The politics
Given one of the main aspects of the book is a Neighborhood Watch and the last thing the head of it wants to do is bring in the next level of authority, the politics of the book are pretty minarchist.
Content warning
Emilia definitely lets her thoughts get away with her when it comes to Kai and Silas holds a séance to get in touch with one of their recently deceased friends.
Who is it for?
It has plenty of action as well as some mystery as the protagonists seek to uncover the lore needed to defeat their foe, making it something fans of Supernatural (when it was good) would be likely to enjoy.
Why read it?
Because it’s fun, the characters are interesting, with a good deal of flaws as well as mystery behind them. And who doesn't like a good redemption story?