The Lost Gate

well it's less cringy than Eragon but i concur with other reviewers in that there's odd unnecessary sexual references that just boggle the mind.
really interesting magic system and i enjoyed them figuring out how gates worked and the long descriptions of gate making shenanigans (but i enjoyed the Martian!) and i liked wad's story for the most part
Danny was a distasteful and annoying character who was presumably written to be cool and likeable (to who!!). i found the book too crass and the humour was a little middle grade for a book which discusses men's “seed” so frequently

Card might hold some bad ideas personally, but he really can tell a fun story from time to time.

This book is really fun and exciting. I very much enjoyed the magic system he came up with for this. And I really love the Danny character because he doesn't constantly make stupid decisions. He acknowledges when he messes up and tries to fix it and doesn't spend time being loyal to people who aren't loyal to him.

Very excited about book #2 in this series, which is already available through the library!

The Lost Gate trilogy features a compelling magic system (“gates”) to propel a story about feuding descendants of mythological gods.

This book FLEW by me. Usually audiobooks seem to drag but, this one was just right.

Danny North grew up in a family of mages but, believed himself to have no magic. Because of this he is picked on and given the impression that he is worthless. That changes when he realizes that he has Gate magic – mages with this magic are killed– so Danny is worse off than before. So, in the story he takes off and tries to learn this magic when there have been no other Gate Mages for centuries (At least ones that have lived). His goal– make a Great Gate that will connect Earth to Westille (?Guessing because I listened to it) but, does he really want to do that? And who can a 13 year old on the run trust when the long descendants of ‘gods' are searching to kill him?
And then there is The Man In the Tree... who is he? Why is he there? and If he is to remember who is he, what will happen?

Absolutely LOVED this book. I've never read Orson Scott Card before, an amazing feat for an someone who went through the American school system, but I had heard great things. I thought he only wrote Sci-Fi though so, this was a bit of a surprise. A damn good surprise!
The characters all have their own little spark and the magic system is done beautifully.
I love it.
I chuckled, I smiled, cheered people on, rolled my eyes at Danny's stupidity, cried, I yelled and cursed at villians, and listened I had rented the second book from the library already.

This is a very interesting and creative story very true to Orson Scott Card's writing style.

reviews.metaphorosis.com

3.5 stars

Danny's the descendant of gods - literally. Only, the gods are mages who have lost a lot of their power, and Danny doesn't even seem to have that. Living on the family compound, far from ordinary folk, he has little to protect him from his talented cousins, until suddenly a visit from a more powerful clan precipitates a crisis.

I've been a fan of Orson Scott Card's writing since I ran across Ender's Game (the short story) in the  August 1977 Analog. I was just the right age for one of the best short stories of the last century, and I moved on to Card's astounding Planet Called Treason, Songmaster, etc. While Card has made some pretty substantial missteps (Magic Street, Invasive Procedures), much of his work is excellent.

At the same time, I skipped his recent Empire series entirely, when a reader more politically conservative than me told me they were too conservative for his tastes. And of course it's now difficult to think about Card these days without considering his very conservative (and to me offensive) political views. All that taken together, I picked up The Lost Gate partly out of nostalgia, and partly in the hope that a fantasy book would steer clear of politics. That's a faint hope, of course. No book is ever completely divorced from politics. ‘Politics' is just a convenient term for the issues that surround us all daily. A book that didn't deal with them would be pretty dull. So, while reading The Lost Gate, awareness of Card's politics kept creeping into the background. The good news is that the politics is bearable. The cast of characters is reminiscent of a certain set of 80s SFF - clever boy, doting girl, no gays in sight - outdated and sexist, but not worse than many others. Most of the actual policy elements are of the unobjectionable peace and harmony type. Happily, then, Card is still capable of writing books that are more story than screed.

The writing in The Lost Gate, unfortunately, is not up to Card's standard. It's largely good, but feels rushed (which an afterword indicates is true). The narrator, for example, has inconsistent knowledge of the world - he knows little about money, but all about checks. Even a young adult audience will disdain some of the adolescent humor.

Most troubling is the characterization. I give authors of young adult books some humor, but here, a book focused on adolescents has distinctly pre-teen character development. When Danny meets some questionable older boys, he immediately tells them all about himself. It comes across not as naivete, but non-credible writing. A key older character is similarly flimsy.

The magic system, which Card says he has been working on for decades, is surprisingly thin. The idea and setup are good, but a lot of the details are sketchy at best. There are Gatefathers, Finders, Keyfriends, Lockfriends,... We don't learn much more about them than their names. This was an opportunity to do something quite interesting, sadly squandered.

The ending of the book seems to reflect either time pressure or loss of interest - where most series would just be working into the discovery phase - how does all this work?, Card leaps forward to a manufactured crisis. He ends on a good note, but so much opportunity is passed over that it's dissatisfying.

With all that, I still plan to read the next book. Why? Because I found that the politics didn't intrude in the way that I feared, because the world and characters are intriguing enough, and because I believe Card has the skill to pull this off in the end. If you don't buy Card's books because of his politics, then as far as I know, they haven't changed. If I applied that filter, I'd have very few books to choose from. If you've been avoiding Card because you don't want to read about his politics, this book is pretty safe. And if you don't care about any of that, but just want a decent young adult fantasy, go to it. This is not a book that will remind you of Card's startling early skill, but it's fun, quick, and easy.

A good story about magic, It's a fun read.

I read this last year, but I decided to give the audio book a try. Still the same amazing story! I just wasn't a huge fan of the narrators :).

Very good book and fresh new twist on human history. Can't wait for the next installment.

http://myvogonpoetry.com/wp/2011/06/04/audiobook-review-the-lost-gate-by-orson-scott-card/

Short review: This is the best book I have read by Card in a while. He almost always writes about young boys/teens. Card seems to have a special gift at that. This is a modern fantasy that explains the gods of the ancient world. The magic has been diminishing for a while because the gates to the other world where cut off by Loki (the Norse god) about 1400 years ago.

Danny has the power to restore the gate, but the Mages are not sure that it should be restored. So he is on the run, being encouraged by a few and hunted by the rest.

full review on my blog at http://bookwi.se/lost-gate-card/

I found this book to be quite a departure from other books I've read by Orson Scott Card. The general storyline was interesting, and I'm curious about what will happen in the next book, but the writing and some of the descriptions were really distracting. There were a lot of parts that were about sex or sexual things and really added nothing to character development or plot. They seemed odd and out of place - almost as if he were writing with a directive to “sex things up”. It was disappointing, to say the least.