As homeless people begin to dissapear in the twon of Shinjuku, Tokyo; Unlikely allies will soon cross paths as they try to uncover the mystery of these dissapearances. A saddened girl, who's mother is on her death bed pears out the winow and see a gargoyle statue come alive and move. After hearing a similar story from a neighbor, a retired police detective named Shigenori begins his obession with the same gargoyle. In the same town Kotaro, a college student and his friend begin to try and research the dissapearances that soon become murders.
After an unfortunate event, Kotaro and his friends research leads him to investigate the same building that Shigenori is lurking around. Meeting each other wasn't the only discovery. They meet Galla the guardian of the third pillar and that is the beginning of their adventures. The author does a great job of making The Gate of Sorrows a sequel to
The Book of Heroes.
There is a lot more to the book, but for the sake of the story I'll keep the review short due to the amount of possible spoilers.
Overview:
Minus a few small roadblocks, this is a great book with many layers. Miyabe is great a taking the many different genres and cramming them into one place in her stories. Fans of
Death Note and her previous book
The Book of Heroes will find this book right up their alley. As far as storytelling goes its much better than
The Book of Heroes and it engages the reader better. Miyabe also opens the door to a third book. That is something I'd pick up since this book was a keeper.
A series of murders shocks Tokyo’s Shinjuku ward, but Shigenori, a retired police detective, is instead obsessed with a gargoyle that seems to move. College freshman Kotaro launches a web-based investigation of the killer, and comes to find that answers may lie within an abandoned building in the center of Japan’s busiest neighborhood, and beyond the Gate of Sorrows. In this adult sequel to Miyabe’s The Book of Heroes, you will meet monsters from other worlds and ordinary horrors that surpass even supernatural threats.