Gatefather

While an entertaining read, [a:Orson Scott Card 589 Orson Scott Card https://d2arxad8u2l0g7.cloudfront.net/authors/1294099952p2/589.jpg] clearly has fallen into a formula for his book series.Book 1 was a wonderful book, and a great start to what looked like it would be an interesting series. It had good pacing and wove an intricate and involved universe. Similar, in some aspects, to [a:Larry Niven 12534 Larry Niven https://d2arxad8u2l0g7.cloudfront.net/authors/1182720933p2/12534.jpg]'s [b:The Burning City 100368 The Burning City Larry Niven https://d2arxad8u2l0g7.cloudfront.net/books/1171467265s/100368.jpg 1455095] stories.Book 2 felt sort of like it was rushed, with a rather abrupt and harsh ending. But still, the pacing and overall story development felt real.Book 3 (this book), however, seemed to be where Card realized he had all these loose threads to tie up. The pacing is all over the place, going from spending several chapters about nothing to wrapping up the major antagonistic plot device in a few pages. The power structures, outlined so meticulously in the first book, are run roughshod over, with a tremendous amount of power and ability creep taking place in just a few passages. Furthermore, the characters seem to become weak vessels for philosophical discussion. Any back stories, intrigue, or development they may have had is squashed, under a relentless parade of righteousness.Card also loses touch with some of the aspects of his older young adult novels. His understanding of teenagers, particularly highschool students, proved to be lacking in some places.He wasn't going to have sex with anybody until he actually made a lifelong commitment and married someone. Period. No exceptions, not even for true love.This, and the related attempts of the various girls to throw themselves at Danny are completely unlike and distant from any realistic teenage character. Card attempts to cover his ass later in the book, by saying its the Sutathites who caused this, but that feels like a weak plot device. It feels like, once again, Card was exerting some of his more conservative beliefs onto his characters. While thats his right as an author, it doesn't help in the realism of his books.And that sort of gets to the heart of what I was saying earlier. It reads like an adult fantasy novel, with occasional obnoxious interjections of fellow-kids, that is to say, the chapters where the group of children bantered with each other felt out of place, like they were put there to ensure the book appeared as a young-adult book.