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Loading... Gatefather (2015)by Orson Scott Card
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. This is another example of Card's ability to create believable characters. The high school teenagers act like teenagers, especially the dialogue. This is also one of his deepest and philosophical works I've read to date. Although it is touched on only a few places the effects are diffused throughout the work. I really got to like the Danny character and his approach to things. Some might say the end is predictable and too goody goody, but it fits the pattern of the story. If you enjoyed the first two books in the series, you will love this one. I wanted to like this more. I'm not saying I didn't like it because I actually did. I just wanted to like it more. So what was good? The ideas! The direction the magic took was rather cool and I would have loved to play in this world for a lot longer, but the focus came down rather heavily upon individual choices and Danny's godlike power. Not that this couldn't be a good thing, mind you, even in the face of a setup that could bring down war between worlds and numerous new uber-powers laying waste by both accident and intent, but in the end, we were left with very little actual action. Good story paths, yes, and the idea carries everything better than you might expect, but that leads me to the bad. The bad: Reader expectations. I'm not going to sit here and say we're all bad people because we're used to and enjoy anti-heroes and we now hate christ-like imageries because we've seen such things overdone to the point of absurdity. I'm also not going to complain that what was a much gentler touch in the first two novels then gets to be a bit hammer-like in the third. What I will say is that if you go into reading this knowing that you'll be dealing with a genuinely heroic and moral MC, perhaps something like Ender or Alvin Maker, but without their obvious failings, then you might start thinking that he might be rather single-dimensional. And you'd be right. At least in the previous novels, he was mooning people or knocking up chicks. In this one, he just plays host to Seth and never needs to worry about anything because he's amazingly powerful. And then we get the morality play. Don't get me wrong! I like a good morality play that's done well. I don't even care if it's heavy as long as it's also clever as hell. This novel's writing is crystal clear and I still enjoyed a lot of the characters and it was very much a YA, but the very insistent focus that most girls (mind you, not women) will always be attracted to the truly powerful, got a bit gruesome. That being said, there was still a rather big mix between the extra-juvenile (to be expected, considering their ages,) and some rather cool but out of place philosophical moments, (which also might be expected, considering their ages.) However, somewhere along the line, these didn't gel for me and it fell flat. Maybe that's just me and I'm being a bit more harsh on this novel than I usually am because I've read and loved so much of OSC's works. I particularly loved the philosophical moments in the others, even. This one felt a bit rushed. Like it needed another pass and tone up, perhaps a different main focus or at least one that brought out the peril a bit more. I found myself thinking the novel was about to wrap up half-way through and wondered where it could go. The actual end was... okay, but just okay. I wanted to have more happen. We did get something big, but we didn't have to work for it. I just feel a bit cheated. no reviews | add a review
Belongs to SeriesMither Mages (3)
Fantasy.
Fiction.
Literature.
HTML: The much-anticipated third installment in Card's New York Times bestselling Mithermages series Danny North is the first Gate Mage to be born on Earth in nearly two thousand years, or at least the first to survive and claim his power, for families of Westil in exile on Earth have a treaty that requires the death of any suspected Gate Mage. The wars between the families had been terrible, until at last they realized it was their own survival in question. But a Gate Mage, one who could build a Great Gate back to Westil, would give his own family a terrible advantage over all the others and reignite the wars. So it was decided that they all had to die. And if the families didn't kill them, the Gate Thief wouldâ??that mysterious mage who destroyed every Great Gate, along with the Gate Mage who created it, before it could be opened between Earth and Westil. But Danny survived. And Danny battled the Gate Thiefâ??and won. What he didn't know at the time was that the Gate Thief had a very good reason for closing the Great Gatesâ??and Danny has now fallen into the power of that great enemy of both Earth and Wes No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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