The Nowhere Gate book review

As with most sequels, the Nowhere Gate is similar to its predecessor and share some of its strengths and weaknesses: the characters are varied and enjoyable, and the various worlds connected by the gates are under explored, lacking strong elements to distinguish them from one another.
The largest issue with the Nowhere Gate is that for most of the book, the plot is un-interactive with the readers and the characters: the two primary objectives of our protagonists both require research to resolve, meaning that it’s a long time before the readers can participate (I.E read tangible events) in the pursuit and challenges of those objectives. They have to wait for clues/answers to be discovered or given to the characters (about half-way through for one plot line) before meaningful scenes of conflict and challenge take place. This does not mean I found the first half boring, just that on retrospect it relied heavily on filler action sequences, and character interactions.
A pair of minor qualms I have is that the characters/narrative spends a bit too much time hyping up Elizabeth (almost every character has a sentence singing her praise), and that the climatic revelation/twist was somewhat underprepared.