I am, as I am so often, very torn about this book.
First off I have to say I disagree with the general sentiment expressed by many of the more negative reviews in terms of the book being badly paced and overly descriptive.
I can see where this sentiment comes from but I just want to say that, for the most part, this is very much within the parameters of preference and not some core flaw of the book.
On the contrary, I had the surprising experience of the book actually pulling me in and fully engaging me with its writing. And I am a person that usually has no patience for overly flowery language and long-winded descriptions because they typically seem pretentious to me.
Not in this case. It never felt ostentatious as more purpley prose usually does with writing that tries to sound poetic or elaborate and smart while I was still being drawn into a vivid and complex world.
There are arguably a few minor cases where the descriptiveness leans a bit too far into tedious but those instances are few and far between.

There are plenty of other things that in my opinion are much more clear-cut cases of objective flaws.

From here on there are mild spoilers but I believe nothing in here would be a detriment to your enjoyment of the story.
The bigger problem I had was that the world, as vivid and as complex as it might appear, doesn't actually hold up to scrutiny. The rules of the world as well as the character motivations are shallow and contrived at best and outright contradictory and illogical at worst.
The only complex character that had a somewhat consistent personality and motivation was the MC but she just suffered from pitiful daddy issues mixed with the extreme Japanese honor culture.
While this is not inconsistent or wrong, it is just not interesting to me. It's a basic personality that was old and clichéd decades ago already and there is nothing beyond this except for the obligatory moral goodie-two-shoes trait which is not any more interesting.
The sad part about this is that the story starts out with this fucked up character that has committed horrible atrocities, has seen the dark and bloody side of battle, the pain and suffering she caused, and is struggling to go on with all this guilt.
It's a perfect setup for a more nuanced and complex character with ambiguous morals that is struggling to change and move toward being a better person. And this is a struggle the author is trying to describe, the only problem is that she doesn't have the guts to let her character actually do a single even slightly questionable thing while not being under literal mind control.
This negates all this interesting complexity and makes it someone else's fault entirely.
It declaws the main internal conflict of the MC and instead of the badass she is supposed to be, she becomes this pitiful excuse of a wannabe tortured hero with not even half as much backbone as she is supposed to have.

Another problem I already alluded to earlier is the world-building. The magic world is super secret but they constantly have confrontations and even battles that topple cranes and destroy buildings in broad daylight but they are all just sooo rich and powerful that they can just hush it all up and the book never even makes a big deal about any of it. It's allowed just because of the rule of cool I guess with no further explanation required.

The same lackluster writing is also present in the other characters. The shinigami which is the core motivator for the main plotline makes no sense whatsoever. He is just so conveniently mysterious and repeatedly makes absurdly convenient 180s on stuff. He gave the impression to me that his only reason for existing is to excuse the absurd path the plot takes and to explain away all the illogical leaps but he does this badly. Very badly.
The bad guy or guys are even worse. It is rare that I have seen a bad guy that is more stupid than this. It's far beyond Voldemort's levels of stupid and that is saying a LOT. They also exist only to justify the rest of the plot and none of their decisions make any sense and the book doesn't even try to logically explain any of their reasoning. It's just utter bullshit from beginning to end.
I don't really have anything flattering to say about any of the other characters either.
One thing I want to mention is the case of the vanishing second love interest.
The MC is clearly still extremely hung up on her ex to the point where she is intensely jealous. Early on a super sexy hunky billionaire is very interested in her and tries to woo her and figure her out and this entire thread reaches a point where he gets wounded and is brought to a hospital and then he just vanishes from the script. He is not mentioned again until the epilogue.
To be fair most of the story takes place within a few days. So not mentioning him for some time doesn't actually equate to much here. I guess my bigger problem is how she immediately starts to pine after her ex as soon as she sees him. The hormonal teenager just doesn't fit together with the rest of her personality.
There are some other stereotypical characters to fulfill the expected roles as well but they are all cardboard cutouts without depth or nuance whatsoever and are not worth mentioning.
This is the level of character work present here.

To summarize, the story is written in an engaging way but it has no coherence.
There is an incredible book buried in this incoherent mess somewhere but this version isn't it. ( )

The publisher promotes 'Ebony Gate' as "a female John Wick story with dragon magic set in contemporary San Francisco’s Chinatown." which I should have taken as a warning. The John Wick movies look nice, they're packed with action scenes that escalate as the movie progresses and, after a fairly short time, they bore me because the violence is all there is to the plot.

'Ebony Gate' was more inventive and entertaining than the John Wick movies but the action was equally relentless and ultimately, equally uninteresting.

I enjoyed the combination of modern San Francisco with South East Asian magic systems.

I was fascinated by the idea of a diaspora of Lóng Jiārén, the descendants of the eight sons of the Dragon and heir to their powers, living amongst humans across the world in talent-based Clans, competing to increase their hoard of magical artefacts from their fractured home world. Discovering how Jiārén culture worked and how they used their Talents kept me curious and entertained.

The 'You have 48 hours to save San Franciso by finding and restoring the Ebony Gate that closes a portal to the underworld' was epic quest material.

Given all that, I'd expected to be writing a gushing review saying how much fun this was and how much I'm looking forward to reading the next book in the series.

Unfortunately, as the book got into its stride, I began to part company with it. I never got to the point where I wanted to set the book aside but I had a growing feeling that something was missing.

The storytelling felt mechanical. I was being moved from one display of magic to the next without gaining any momentum or engagement. I was reminded of that point I seem to reach in every Avengers movie where the CGI goes on for so long that I disengage from it emotionally even though I admire the quality of the production standards. I loved the magic and the fights but I couldn't get traction with the characters.

Emiko, our heroine, didn't work for me. She had a great traumatic backstory that was slowly and cleverly revealed. She had some witty lines and she gives great angst but I didn't believe in her. She's in her late twenties, she spent years as an enforcer for her Clan, using her blade to kill and maim without mercy and on a scale that eventually earned her the title of The Butcher of Beijing yet she often behaves in a way that suggests that in terms of judgement and emotional stability, she's stuck in late adolescence.

The ending of the book was also a little strange. I'd expected the climax to be the end of the battle that the whole book had been building up to. Instead, the final chapters were an attempt to re-establish some normalcy by having Emiko take her charismatic, already-save-my-life-once, knows-more-about-my-culture-than-a-human-should, not-my-boyfriend- honest, tall, fit, good looking billionaire to dinner with the only human couple she has any kind of relationship with. It seemed an odd decision unless it was meant to set up the next book. A pessimistic voice in my head was going, 'Please don't let there be a love triangle between Emiko, the not-my-boyfriend billionaire and the used-to-be-my-boyfriend Jiārén white tiger.'

So, 'Ebony Gate' kept me entertained but it also left me feeling slightly dissatisfied.

I'm going to wait to see a summary of the plot of the next book before I decide whether to continue with this trilogy. ( )

The first in a fantasy series steeped in the authors' Asian culture. The novel takes place in the west coast of the United States. The "ebony gate" is stolen and the main character takes it upon herself to retrieve it to its proper location. It is a shield against evil that will flood in without it. The main character, Emiko, is skilled with a sword and martial arts skills that she needs as she battles her rivals. There are ghosts and magic but I feel it is a tad to slow in spots. ( )

I had a great time with this book! I am a huge fan of urban fantasy and am always looking for new books in the genre to try so I was excited to get started with this book. I thought that this was a very good start to a promising series and once I started reading, I did not want to stop. I found this book to be very exciting and I am so glad that I decided to give it a try.

Emiko is from a very powerful family but she is trying to live a quiet life importing antiques. She is known as the Butcher to many because she served as the Blade to the Soong clan. When a blood debt is called in, she is given the task of recovering the Ebony Gate and has her work cut out for her in this exciting tale. I couldn’t wait to see how she would accomplish everything in the time frame she had to work with. I thought that the world-building in this book was very well done and I was quite impressed by the colorful cast of characters, especially Emiko.

I listened to the audiobook and thought that Natalie Naudus did a fantastic job with the story. I have had a lot of luck with this narrator in the past and thought that she did a fantastic job of bringing the story to life. I loved the various voices that she used for the cast of characters and I thought that she was able to bring just enough excitement and emotion to her reading. I do believe that her narration added to my enjoyment of this story.

I would recommend this book to others. I thought that this was an incredibly unique and entertaining story featuring characters that were easy to cheer on. I cannot wait to see what adventures Emiko will face in the next installment.

I received a review copy of this book from Macmillan Audio and Tor Books. ( )