The Gate of Gods

As if it had heard my small grumbles about the previous book, this felt a lot more personal, so that was satisfying. Part of that is to do with developments in the story, and part of that is because I felt more confident that my interpretation of Tremaine’s character.

She doesn’t easily reveal certain feelings to people around her -- and doesn’t always understand or identify those emotions privately to herself. So one has to look at the pattern of her behaviour and read between the lines. I ended up enjoying that subtlety.

This was a tense and satisfying conclusion (and there’s more I could say, except, spoilers).

His expression said plainly that if she thought this was easy, she was crazy. He told her, “I don’t know what’s show more in your head, but when you get over it, I’ll be here.” show less

Final book of the trilogy. I could not put it down for the last half of the book.
Wells constructs such an imaginative world, with complicated rules of magic and a highly complex plot that she pulls together expertly at the end.

We have the last part of the Gardier War, with Tremaine and her band running and gating all over the place trying to stop the Gardier, by rescuing the sorcerers in the besieged city of Lodun. As the story wraps up, we learn just who the Gardier are and what happened to them, the source of their magic, and even something about the ruins on the Syprian world and their origins.

I had previously only read Wells' Murderbot books, which are great but very different. Those are light and comic, while this series is deep, show more epic, and not very funny. I jumped into these without reading the books set earlier in this world, which I gather are about Nicholas and Arisilde- those are definitely on my list now, as Nicholas is a wonderful character. Tremaine too, is wonderfully drawn. Great series. show less

This book is the third and final novel in Martha Well’s Fall of Ile-Rein trilogy, a fantasy series with portals to multiple worlds, airships, and invaders from another world. It’s also a series that you need to read in order. I’ll potentially be including spoilers for earlier books in this review, so head over to my review of the first book, The Wizard Hunters, if you’re unfamiliar with the series.

Using the spheres and their new knowledge of other worlds, Tremaine and her friends have new hope of saving Ile-Rein from the Gardier. They have their sights set on Lodun, the besieged city of wizards. But the quest to rescue Lodun leads them to places stranger than they could have imagined.

Martha Wells doesn’t write comedic fantasy, show more but her work nonetheless always manages to make me laugh. I think it’s because her humor always comes from the characters and their interactions with each other. Plus, there’s a lot of sources for humor with the culture clashes between worlds — just look at Tremaine’s marriage to Ilias! Although my favorite has to be Gerald and his reactions to the antics of the others. He reminds me a tad of Stone from her Raksura series.

I believe that each book in a series should expand on the world in some way, and The Gate of Gods definitely does this. While trying to develop a new type of gate, Tremaine and the rest of the group find a set of ruins in Ilias’s world that get to the heart of the magical gates and show a new side to these worlds, their history, and the Gardier themselves.

I sometimes could get secondary characters confused, but over the course of this series I’ve become increasingly attached to the main cast. I love Tremaine’s prickliness for one. I was also thrilled with the return of Nicolas in the last book, since I enjoyed him so much in Death of the Necromancer. I really want to read more about Nicolas and what he was doing during all these series. Hmm, maybe it’s time to get to that Ile-Rein short story collection I have on hand…

The beginning might have been a bit slow, but by the end I couldn’t put The Gate of Gods down. It’s a satisfying conclusion to a solid fantasy series. It speaks to the strength of Wells’s capabilities as a writer that this is actually one of her middling works. She’s just that fantastic.

Originally posted on The Illustrated Page. show less

Completing the cycle of the fall of Ile-Rien one finally gets some answers to the origins of the Gardier menace, which has been my one frustration with a story that I have otherwise enjoyed a great deal. Show me a totalitarian state and there's usually an ideology, and I'll admit that my training as a historian was making me wonder when the philisophical punch line was going to be delivered. Well, like most great evils, the actual driving force behind the Gardier turns out to be a rather tawdry thing, if no less dangerous for the nature of its shallowness. One can argue that Martha Wells is much like a movie director who is not giving you a good look at her monster until the last moment she possibly can, both for shock affect, and to show more keep you from noticing the sad superficiality of it all. To give Wells her due, such is often the nature of the tragic fairy tales.

As for the fate of Tremaine Valiarde, Illias, and the rest, you can read the book to find out! And you should. show less

I love Martha Wells' various takes on gender throughout her books, and this series in no exception. Tremaine is a great heroine. I love how she falls into every sort of danger and then just fearlessly kicks ass. I also love that she is basically never the emotionally competent one in any of her relationships.

A well written and fitting conclusion to the trilogy. At first, the situation with multiple worlds and the gates and the Gardier is confusing, but the picture slowly comes into focus as the book goes along. Tremaine and her friends and allies keep running and fighting back, while she navigates the terms of her relationship with Ilias. I thought this was engaging and interesting.

The concluding book of the Ile-Rien series -- satisfying and surprising enough to continue to the end. Wells is good at characters evolving along with making up a credible (by fantasy standards!) situation. ****