I love Lincoln Child as an author but The Third Gate fell flat for me. I'll try to avoid spoilers but there seemed to be so many different ways that this book could go. It could have gone the creepy engineering route like Riptide or Ice Limit. It could have gone a more traditional Mummy route with each chamber/seal filled with new danger. Unfortunately, the book took the "possessed by a mummy" option. The Third Gates takes a long time to wind up. The sprinkled clues along the way aren't subtle and the ending is predictable. Even then it leaves a lot of questions unaswered. There is a mix of supernatural sighting and sabotage. The end never does a good job of explaining these items.

The book felt like it was the wrong length. It almost would have been better at 450 pages to give the ending a treatment appropriate to the wind up. It wasn't terrible, it just felt like it didn't deliver on the promise.