The Power of Five

About The Power of Five

Fourteen-year-old Matt Freeman is sent to live in a remote Yorkshire village as part of a scheme for troubled teens -- and quickly discovers the village is a front for an ancient evil trying to claw its way back into the world. Matt is one of five children scattered across the globe, each carrying a mark that identifies them as a Gatekeeper: living defenses against the Old Ones, monstrous beings who ruled the earth before humanity and have been trying to return ever since, aided by human cultists who worship them as gods.

Anthony Horowitz -- best known for the fast, gadget-driven espionage of Alex Rider -- turns considerably darker and stranger here, blending genuine horror (body horror, cult rituals, apocalyptic dread) with a globe-spanning quest structure as Matt and the other four Gatekeepers -- in Peru, China, and beyond -- are drawn together across five books toward a final confrontation. It's bleaker and more frightening than Horowitz's spy fiction, closer in spirit to Lovecraftian cosmic horror repackaged for a teen audience, with real stakes and a body count that doesn't flinch from consequence.

Published in the US as The Gatekeepers, the series is a five-book complete story for readers who want Horowitz's control of pace and plotting applied to apocalyptic horror rather than spycraft.

How to read this series

Read the five novels in publication order: Raven's Gate, Evil Star, Nightrise, Necropolis, Oblivion. It's a single continuous story building toward one climax, with the Gatekeepers scattered at first and gradually converging, so the books should be read in sequence without skipping.

No companion material or side reading exists for this series -- it's a tight, complete five-book arc. In the US, the series was published under the title The Gatekeepers, with the same five books in the same order.