Kelley Armstrong is a name I’ve heard mentioned around the traps, but until The Gathering I was otherwise unacquainted with her work. And while the cynic in me tends to win out when the phrases “first in a trilogy” and “best-selling author” come into close collocation, all in all this novel was a pleasant surprise.

Having been created from scratch by the St Cloud medical research company, the town of Salmon Creek is an urban planner’s dream. Deliberately secluded in the verdant lushness of Vancouver Island, it’s the perfect environment for its crack team of scientists and researchers to engage in the medical research arms race without interference from Pfizer or GlaxoSmithKline or what have you. For Maya, who’s known for her affinity with the natural world, Salmon Creek is a haven, giving her an opportunity to engage with the wilderness around her. But perfect worlds never are, and when a recently arrived reporter winds up dead, Maya can’t shake the feeling that something odd is going on. But the mystery doesn’t just involve Salmon Creek. There’s also Maya herself, who through her relationship with bad boy Rafe is beginning to realise that her kinship with nature runs far deeper than she could possibly have imagined. Just who is she really, and why is her world starting to change so dramatically?

I’m the first to admit that I’m a sucker for a rural setting, and Armstrong’s rendering of Vancouver Island brings to mind Stephen King’s well-worn portraits of his native Maine. Given that so many YA paranormals rely on a down-and-out urban setting to give them their grit and hardness, it’s a pleasant treat to read one that has a de Lint-esque milieu. Yes, it’s all a bit quixotic, and there are more oh-so-cute  animals than you can shake a stick at, but the setting alone helps to set this series well apart from a lot of the other stuff I’ve reviewed of late. Salmon Creek is drawn with painstaking care, and it’s hard not to appreciate the author’s efforts here, even if there is a tendency, particularly early on in the novel, to get a little bit geography textbook on us–I had the occasional sense that what I was reading was intended more for a social studies textbook than for general readerly consumption. I know that geography has gone the way of the dodo (you know, wherever they live), but surely the largely American audience of this novel would have some basic comprehension of the rather large island we’re dealing with here? (And surely, surely, we don’t need paragraphs of exposition about the ten or so different regionally specific names given to the mountain lion?)

But things do pick up once this info dumpery has been waded through, and it’s hard not to enjoy the ride on which Armstrong takes us. The plot is terribly thin–essentially it can be summed up as “Maya learns more about her past, and then she’s chased by people whose identity you’ll probably learn in book three”–but Armstrong does enough with mood and setting to add a good deal of substance and enjoyment to the reading experience. Protagonist Maya is strong and feisty, although perhaps a little ridiculously so at some points: this girl has a come-back repertoire to rival Oscar Wilde’s, and occasionally it feels as though the dialogue is set up purely to facilitate her witty repartee (or perhaps soliloquy is a more appropriate term).  But it’s a relief to see that she doesn’t succumb to the whole damsel in distress routine. Though life’s not a picnic for Maya, she does what she can to solve her own problems, and even takes some time to reflect on her own personal shortcomings–one of which is her intransigent, rather judgemental nature.

A little less glowingly, this element of Maya’s personality seems to be attributed in part to her abandonment issues–Maya, like just about every YA protag in history, is adopted, and despite her tough exterior struggles with issues of identity and self-worth. But while we’re told about her adopted status from the outset, the whole set-up becomes a bit cringeworthy and forced when we learn about (potentially) the truth about her natural parents and why she was given us. It all gets a little bit Island of Dr Moreau (see my review), and I have to admit that my interest began to wane at this point. Changelings and skinwalkers? Sure, I can handle that. But lycanthropism due to gene manipulation at the hands of some evil mad scientists? Hmm. To be honest, this sort of thing puts me in an entirely different readerly mindset, and that grain of salt becomes increasingly hard to take.

In addition to this, I struggled a little with the unevenness of the characterisation found in The Gathering. Some characters–Rafe, Daniel, and Maya’s parents–are mostly solid and well-drawn, but others are bizarre caricatures. Daniel’s abusive drunk of a father and “quick-with-her-fists” Sam come to mind, and of course there’s the old crone who makes a B movie-esque cameo to call Maya a witch.  (Although no doubt these grumpy types will all end up being supernatural beings of some sort. And while as an Aussie I’m shamefully ill-informed about the present-day sensitivities regarding Native American peoples and their cultures, I couldn’t help but feel a little uneasy regarding the sort of “noble savage” approach taken throughout the novel.

But although I was generally able to turn a blind eye to these characterisation quirks and the thin plotting, I admit to being absolutely bewildered by the end of this novel–or the utter lack thereof: I turned the page only to find a chapter teaser for the sequel staring at me. Admittedly, it wasn’t as bad as the Red Riding Hood situation (see my review), but it’s a cruel trick to play on your poor reader. I find trilogies enough of an undertaking to begin with–they require significant investment on behalf of the reader–and I tend to feel as though I’m entitled to some sort of payoff for my efforts. A blank page does not an ending make. Given that things were beginning to pick up after a fairly slow-burning beginning, it’s a shame that things ended (or didn’t) as they did.

In all, The Gathering is a promising start to what I don’t doubt will be a gripping trilogy, but I have a feeling I’ll be waiting until the next two books are done and dusted before dipping my toe into this world again.

Rating: (good)

With thanks to Hachette Australia for the review copy.

Purchase The Gathering from Amazon | Book Depository UK | Book Depository USA

Other books by Kelley Armstrong: