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courtneyhope42 's review for:
The Lost Gate
by Orson Scott Card
Overall Rating: 2 stars
Concept Rating: 3 stars
Execution Rating: 1 star
Danny North belongs to a family descended of the Norse “gods”—mages who drew their superhuman power from another world accessible to them by magical gates. However, hundreds of years ago, when the Gate Mage, Loki, closed all the gates to this other world, the Norse gods—along with similar families of mages from Greece, Rome, etc.—lost much of their strength, and vowed to kill any new Gate Mage who might once again overturn the balance of power. When Danny discovers his own talent as a Gate Mage, he realizes that he must flee his own family and somehow learn the lost art of his magic in order to stay hidden and alive. Meanwhile, in the other world, another young Gate Mage finds himself in a royal palace with secrets of his own.
I’ve read many of Orson Scott Card’s novels, adoring some and tolerating others, but I barely even finished this one. The Lost Gate is unnecessarily long, with several chapters included that add nothing to the story, and Card’s writing is boring and shallow. The entire novel could easily be reduced to a short story or two, and the plot would make just as much sense, and the ideas would have remained captivating without feeling drawn out past redundancy. Very few of the characters displayed any significant amount of depth or growth—for example, only two of the characters seemed to possess complex motivations and histories, while the others all seemed predictable, simple, and not even particularly likable. In addition, Card discusses spacetime at length in The Lost Gate as if it has purpose, ambition, will, and feelings, but these ideas are wildly incorrect. Spacetime is a dimension, and a way of looking at space and time together, but approaching it as something one might choose to serve or disobey is like asking the quadratic formula what you should have for breakfast—life and physics just don’t work that way.
The concept of deities existing in reality as magicians intrigued me at first, but by the end of the end of the novel, what interested me the most was the story of the Gate Mage and a Queen in the other world. These characters are the two truly complex characters that I mentioned above, and their hidden ambitions, complicated loyalties, and underhanded actions both surprised and impressed me. However, the few good chapters focusing on their story could not outweigh the rest of the flaws I found with the novel, and so I therefore do not recommend The Lost Gate. If you want to read a fantasy novel by Orson Scott Card, pick up Enchanted instead. If you’re looking for a story combining old gods, modern times, and magic, look into The Kane Chronicles by Rick Riordan, author of the Percy Jackson series. But it wouldn’t be a great loss if The Lost Gate became A Lost Book.
Concept Rating: 3 stars
Execution Rating: 1 star
Danny North belongs to a family descended of the Norse “gods”—mages who drew their superhuman power from another world accessible to them by magical gates. However, hundreds of years ago, when the Gate Mage, Loki, closed all the gates to this other world, the Norse gods—along with similar families of mages from Greece, Rome, etc.—lost much of their strength, and vowed to kill any new Gate Mage who might once again overturn the balance of power. When Danny discovers his own talent as a Gate Mage, he realizes that he must flee his own family and somehow learn the lost art of his magic in order to stay hidden and alive. Meanwhile, in the other world, another young Gate Mage finds himself in a royal palace with secrets of his own.
I’ve read many of Orson Scott Card’s novels, adoring some and tolerating others, but I barely even finished this one. The Lost Gate is unnecessarily long, with several chapters included that add nothing to the story, and Card’s writing is boring and shallow. The entire novel could easily be reduced to a short story or two, and the plot would make just as much sense, and the ideas would have remained captivating without feeling drawn out past redundancy. Very few of the characters displayed any significant amount of depth or growth—for example, only two of the characters seemed to possess complex motivations and histories, while the others all seemed predictable, simple, and not even particularly likable. In addition, Card discusses spacetime at length in The Lost Gate as if it has purpose, ambition, will, and feelings, but these ideas are wildly incorrect. Spacetime is a dimension, and a way of looking at space and time together, but approaching it as something one might choose to serve or disobey is like asking the quadratic formula what you should have for breakfast—life and physics just don’t work that way.
The concept of deities existing in reality as magicians intrigued me at first, but by the end of the end of the novel, what interested me the most was the story of the Gate Mage and a Queen in the other world. These characters are the two truly complex characters that I mentioned above, and their hidden ambitions, complicated loyalties, and underhanded actions both surprised and impressed me. However, the few good chapters focusing on their story could not outweigh the rest of the flaws I found with the novel, and so I therefore do not recommend The Lost Gate. If you want to read a fantasy novel by Orson Scott Card, pick up Enchanted instead. If you’re looking for a story combining old gods, modern times, and magic, look into The Kane Chronicles by Rick Riordan, author of the Percy Jackson series. But it wouldn’t be a great loss if The Lost Gate became A Lost Book.