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The house continues to surprise the King family as their search for G, their mother goes on. Some surprising events occur that moves the story father along. Again, a very good book. ( )

Family is a theme within this novel, but it deviates into cliched gender roles with the maternal figures represented as ladies who need to be rescued, and the male characters as potential rescuers.

This novel focusses on western civilization, and minimally represents alternative cultures. The Assyrian Empire are the only Eastern people characterized, and are only portrayed as sadistic, cruel, and harsh with human sacrifice and an assassin society as a way of life. The family is Christian and American, and they are represented as faulted, but generally good people who are fighting against evil. This is an allusion to a bias against Eastern cultures and religions because complexity is given to the protagonists, but only generalities are applied to the antagonist's culture (the near eastern Assyrian Empire).

Integrating this series into the middle school english curriculum would require supplemental sources of information to fully understand all of the allusions made For example, a unit devoted to researching the allusions to Pop Culture made in the novels. ( )

The King family continues to discover new and dangerous secrets about their house. The boys, Xander and David, continue to search for their mother but find someone else instead. The strange man, Taksidian, continues to try and get the Kings out of the house in any way he can.

The third book in the Dreamhouse Kings series continues to offer great action. The characters are still a bit stagnant and none of them seem to be anywhere closer to their goals. While there is little resolution, there is still a lot of forwrd momentum that is driving the story forward.

3/5 ( )

Did a little research, found out Liparulo is primarily known as a Christian writer, so I'm sure that's why this family is so tight and a little cheesy. Not sure that's actually relevant, but it was interesting.

By this book, all the books had started to blend together, so I'm not sure what happened in Gatekeepers as opposed to the others in the middle of the series. (Honestly, the series probably should have been one book. Divided into five, each turned out to feel really short and therefore (at $10 per ebook) pretty expensive.

Anyway, action and adventure and mystical stuff everywhere you turn. Good fun. And for once in a horror book/movie/etc., someone has a really good reason for why they can't just move out of the spooky house. ( )