Max and the Gatekeeper is the story of twelve-year-old Max and the adventure he becomes involved in when he is sent to his Grandfather’s house in the country for the summer. Although he doesn’t really want to be there and the rest of the town treats him badly, he makes friends with his next-door neighbour, Cindy. So it’s a bit of a shock to find out that his Grandfather is guarding an inter-dimensional gateway to other worlds and that the rest of the town are working for evil forces and want to get there hands on it.

Learning that magic exists, that there are other worlds and there are people working with his grandfather to protect the gateway and stop it being used for evil purposes is easy. Learning magic, travelling to other worlds and finding out that his grandfather is training him to take over means that Max, with the aid of Cindy, has to step up to the challenge.

Although this is a fairly standard setup: two young people, magic worlds, grave danger, it does well to tell its own story without falling into too many clichés. The beginning of the story is a little slow and there are some parts later on that do meander, but in general it follows at a reasonable pace with some well though out plot. The characters are well defined and you do get a feel for protagonists and antagonists on both sides. This is a reasonably good YA fantasy and with other books in the series following this one, it is worth checking them out.