Last Man Through The Gate by Tim C. Taylor

Last Man Through The Gate is one of the weirdest books I've read in a while. It is somewhat deceiving, though, because it starts off pretty straight forward. Last Man Through The Gate is about man going though some sort of portal to find a better life in another world only to have the portal shut off just after he completes his transit. Somewhere in the middle of the story, though, things take a gradual change towards the weird, and by the end I felt like character was on some sort of drug trip.

As weird as the story turned out to be, it did have some redeeming qualities. For example, the differences between the societies on both sides of the gate were interesting to explore. There is one society of lower classed, but ever hopeful proletariats and another of an overly cocky ruling class, not quite prepared to defend an uprising. I was also fascinated by the time dialation between sides of the gate. Similar to travel at the speed of light, some times many years would pass in one side of the gate while only days had passed on the other. While interesting, the timeline differences only played a minor role while taking a back seat to the larger, overreaching theme.

Through most of the story, I really cared about the struggles facing the main character. There was so much potential in the plot line, but then it ultimately fell flat and ended in a strange and confusing way. Some of the characters including the main one were quite interesting, but others were unfortunately boring with seemingly little purpose. The author's notes say this is a story about isolation. I guess that means I shouldn't be surprised by the shallow, minor characters, but they left me unfulfilled.

Tragically this story shows lots of potential early on which got me pretty excited, but it quickly turned around and left me feeling confused and disappointed. The author claims his indie publishing company values writing clarity, plots that move, and leaving readers satisfied. I really hope their other published books adhere to this, because this one definitely didn't. As much as I hate to say it, I can't in good conscious recommend this book. Since it did show some potential and was mostly devoid of gamar and spelling errors, I give Last Man Through The Gate 2 stars.

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