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The Lost Gate
by
Orson Scott Card
mythic fantasy in a hardcover edition that was published by Tor Books on January 4, 2011 and has 379 pages.
Explore it on Goodreads or Amazon
Other books by this author which I have reviewed include Alvin Journeyman, Heartfire, The Crystal City, Shadow of the Giant, Shadows in Flight, Ender's Game
First in the Mither Mages mythological fantasy series.
My Take
Oh wow! Wow! Another excellent story from Orson Scott Card! It’s fun. It’s fantastical. Card pulls in every god/goddess known to man to become Families who simply used their powers to conquer various peoples. He twists history to “explain” why cities rose and fell in power.
The Lost Gate opens with a 13-year-old Daniel North who believes he has no magic and lives in fear of being killed by his Family, for being a drekka. He’s the smartest boy in his Family. He knows many languages. Yet he has no friends. His cousins despise him. The aunts and uncles look down upon him. For Daniel has no power, therefore no value. Until the Greek Family comes for an inspection and Daniel is almost caught spying on them until he gates away and is caught by his Uncle Thor.
It seems that a core group in the North Family has been hoping that Daniel had the power to create gates and had set spies upon him. Spies who now urged him to flee lest the Family have to kill him. And so Danny’s adventures begin as he learns how to create and control his gates while he discovers how to survive out in the world of Drowthers. The Orphans find him. Then Victoria finds him, then Yllka, and both have magic related to gates.
In between, we follow the story of Wad, the kitchen boy who emerged from a tree in a kingdom that believes in magics. Wad can also make gates and he uses them to see what everyone else in the castle is doing—who is stealing from whom, who is plotting against the king, who is planning assassinations.
It’s a fantastic evolution of life and history!
I’m quivering like an eager puppy for the next installment!
The Story
Centuries ago, Loki closed every gate between Earth and Westil destroying the possibility of any member of any Family to pass through a gate and be healed, made stronger in his/her own powers. And so, the power of the Families has dwindled as their fears increased. No longer were these mages worshipped as gods. Fear that another Family would produce a Gatefather ran rampant and each made war upon the other. Treaties were made that if any one Family produced a Gatefather, that one would be killed immediately.
No Family was more abused than the North Family, as, for centuries, all the other Families believed that it was the Norths who had closed the gates. And so the Norths plotted and so they planned, hiding their strengths, putting forth a façade of weakness.
The Cover
In a literal sense, the cover makes no sense — a pair of hands holding open a book from which sparkles are spiraling up. But, it speaks to me of myths and magic, the light and promise of knowledge.
