The Gates of Winter is an epic fantasy of two parallel worlds the mystical Eldh and the modern Earth. This is Mark Anthony’s fifth book in his exciting series of magic, suspense, and adventure, "The Last Rune." After reading The Gates of Winter, you are likely to want to read the rest of the books in the series: Beyond the Pale, The Keep of Fire, The Dark Remains, and Blood of Mystery.
The inexplicable Shemal has had the privilege of knowing only two Runebreakers. One, who was her rival, Kelephon, diligently served the Pale King and his powerful army of the apocalypse. The other happened to be Travis Wilder, the Runebreaker of prophecy.
Now, in exile and recently made Runebreaker Larad, Shemal had found a weapon to open the door between the worlds. As the shadow of Shemal’s master - revenge-seeking god Mohg, Lord of Nightfall - hovers, Grace Beckett tries to tame the wild magic, and Travis Wilder joins her in the desperate struggle between warriors and mages, witches and kings and back-stabbers of any and all kinds.
As the day of ultimate retribution comes ever closer, Travis and Grace find themselves facing an opaque plot of nefarious intent whose perniciousness threatens to overtake anyone who tries to stop it. However, if they do not stop it, two worlds will fade into oblivion.
There is plenty of mysticism, fighting, royalty, magic and friendship in this novel, so there is something for everyone - unless you are looking for a romance, because that is nowhere to be found here. The plot is well thought-out and, despite the book being over five hundred pages, it rarely drags and then only in a few places. The characters are well-written and convincing. The descriptions are very important in a fantasy novel; you need to have some descriptions of things that readers can recognize in order for them to believe the outlandish things that you make up. Anthony does a good job of doing just that.