The Gathering by Will Peterson (The Triskellion series: Book 3)

8/10

This book takes place two years after the first two books in the trilogy and begins in Australia with the twins Rachel and Adam Newman living under new names and with new memories to keep them safe and hidden from the Hope Project who are after them and the secrets they hold. I loved the way this gap of two years made the plot feel more substantial. It made it much more epic, with the strands of the story stretching over years of the twins lives instead of just being resolved over the summer holidays. On the other hand, part of me was thinking Nothing happened for two years? Really?

There is a brief Story So Far.... section at the beginning of the book but I still struggled to remember everything that happened in the previous novels (My confusion was probably increased because I only recently finished Michael Scott's "The Necromancer", part of a series about supernaturally gifted twins Sophie and Josh Newman and their attempts to escape from dark forces after them and the secrets they hold).

In some ways, this confusion helped me to understand what the twins were going through at the beginning of the books as their memories are a little bit hazy too. The story soon takes off, however, and you are racing along with the twins and their friend Gabriel as they travel across Australia and then back to the USA to hunt for their missing father, the truth behind their powers and the third and final Triskellion amulet.

The plot also follows what happens to the adults in the story both past and present and so gives a full, well-rounded story that leads to an exciting conclusion. I can definitely see this working as film or television series and it is no surprise that the author(s) first thought of it as a children's TV drama before developing it into the trilogy.

I really found this book hard to put down with each chapter leading me straight into the next without pause for breath. It's an intricate story with twists and turns along the way. One twist completely took me by surprise and sent me scurrying back through the pages to search for the clues I missed. Others, however, weren't that difficult to decipher. This allowed the reader to finish the book with the perfect feeling of being satisfactorily surprised but still a little smug at being able to second guess at least some of the twists!

I would not hesitate to recommend this book and, in fact, all three of the Triskellion books. However, to avoid confusion, it might be better not to read it straight after finishing any of The Secrets of The Immortal Nicholas Flamel series by Michael Scott.