The Lost Gate (Mither Mages) [Hardcover]

Many years ago I read a short story by this author called Sand Magic. The author said that the tale was set on a world he wanted to return to, where people served various magics and in return became wizards in them.

Fast forward more years than I care to think about, and at last he has made good on his promise. The Lost Gate is a much more mature work than the original short story, and feels quite different from it. But all the elements of a classic and enjoyable Orson Scott Card book are found here. We have Card's classic teenage boy heros of course - complete with too much intelligence, and magical abilities. We also have his humour in events and dialogue, as well as the occasional earthy banter. We have some nasty characters, and some caring ones, and plenty of carefully drawn shades in between.

But most importantly here is a story that is just plain enjoyable.

Danny North has grown up in a secluded compound in the USA, filled with people descended from the Norse gods. Other compounds exist for other pantheons, but all are in decline since Loki closed all the gates to another world, Westil. As magical powers are enhanced by travel between worlds, the last 1400 years has been a period of decline for the once powerful mages. A ban on gate mages enforced with a death penalty has effectively prevented any new gates to Westil being created.

Although, in fact, there is rather more to the story than that, as you would expect from Card.

I don't think this is Card's deepest book ever. Other books of his have really got me thinking about things. This one is entertaining, if not so profound. The story is a mature and well thought through one. It may not be his best ever, but I give it five stars because anyone who likes O. S. Card's work should love this one. And if you have never read any of his books, this is as enjoyable an introduction as any of his works.

As well as plenty of classic Card stuff in this book, it also vaguely put me in mind of Percy Jackson, as well as Neil Gaimon's American Gods. It is not derivative of either of those mind.

My only criticism of the work is it left off at a point that had me wanting to read on!

I am looking forward to the next installment of the Mither Mages.

Pitched as the first volume of a catch-all, YA-friendly fantasy series with designs on encompassing every one of the genre's go-to tropes, The Lost Gate sees multiple award-winner Orson Scott Card, an author renowned for beloved sci-fi classic Ender's Game and reviled for his controversial politics, with his sights set high. Too high, perhaps? I don't know... I'm in two minds.

Speaking of which!

A tale of two worlds, linked so long ago by Loki, a powerful gatemage with the ability to twist from the very fabric of space-time magical passages between places - between even planets - but estranged from one another for centuries, The Lost Gate has a pair of adolescents act as our narrative chaperones. In the first world, Westil, Wad is freed from a tall tree in which he has been trapped for untold ages, and soon finds himself a prized advisor at the court of the kingdom of Iceway, with powers beyond the ken of any men. The other world is our own - though the Families, leftover Gods descended from Westilians stranded after Loki fell and The Great Gate with him, know it as Mittlegard.

Danny North was part of a Family once. Now he's been cast out from the secret commune where he grew up, and all because he's shown signs of being a gatemate. With nowhere else to go, he hits the road; a runaway for all intents and purposes, hitching lifts from city to city and shoplifting from Walmart just to get by. As he comes to understand his powers, Danny finds amongst the Drowthers - non-magical folk - both friends and enemies, both teachers and those who will test him. Having long hoped to escape the North's hidden smallholding, you sense Danny might have been happy to leave it at that. Except... he has a destiny. As a gatemage, he has a chance to re-open The Great Gate between worlds, ushering in an era of bountiful peace and sharing - or else one of war; a war of Gods.

But he has to try, doesn't he?

In a fascinating explanatory afterword, Card admits The Mither Mages has been three decades in the making, suffering various false starts under the care of multiple editors, publishers and agents. "I thought of it as my best world ever, and my best magic system. I wanted to tell only stories that were worthy of it." (p.380) And there is a certain grandiosity about the worldspinning begun in The Lost Gate, particularly in Westil - Wad's chapters are far more enrapturing in that regard than Danny's - and indeed the magic system, whereby one gains "power over a type of creature or an element or force of nature by serving its interest, helping it become whatever it most wants to become." (p.379) Both seem boundlessly ambitious; capable, as per Card's modus operandi, of embracing and explaining virtually any fantastic trope - running the gamut from mystical creatures to magical abilities - the author deems include.

Whether Westil and the sympathetic, Norse-tinged magic of the Families can be counted as Card's best, as he stresses, remains to be seen - The Lost Gate is very much the first volume of a series (take what you will from that) - but whichever way you cut the mustard, the charmless misadventures of Danny North are far from "worthy" of either, as per Card's terminology. The boy's a buffoon... an insufferable show-off, mooning authority figures left, right and centre and giving cheek in the erstwhile to everyone who dares do him a kindness. There's a certain wit to his lip, I'll grant, but even then there's too much saying and not enough said.

It's a shame, then, that The Lost Gate's narrative burden is largely at Danny's command; though there's far more to Wad's tale - in meaning, action and import - reduced to interludes between episodes of overbearing slapstick it hardly has the opportunity to flourish. Given which, the component parts of this decades-in-the-making novel oftentimes feel irreconcilable with one another. With maturity, poignancy and profundity one moment and lowest common denominator toilet humour the next, Card seems to want to have his cake and eat it.

Yet for all the frustration of grand designs undermined, I wonder if The Mither Mages might yet summit the peak before it, for from time to time there's a glimmer of something extraordinary shining through the self-consciously snappy banter. And the fart jokes. And the wildly inappropriate sexual inferences. The two worlds - wherever might the twain meet? - and the welcome-all-comers magic system give every indication of being, if not on this occasion then perhaps come volume two, the great things Card insists they are. And surely by then Danny'll have grown up a bit; certainly he grates less towards the end of The Lost Gate than at the outset. I've got my fingers crossed.

But fool me once...

I love the worlds that Orson Scott Card creates and I found this new one compelling. The development of the character Danny was also well done; I look forward to hearing more about him. I'd recommend this book to seasoned readers of contemporary fantasy, but particularly to those who may not have tried the genre before.