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The Gate Thief  By  cover art

The Gate Thief

By: Orson Scott Card
Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki, Emily Rankin
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Publisher's summary

In this sequel to The Lost Gate, best-selling author Orson Scott Card continues his fantastic tale of the mages of Westil, who live in exile on Earth.

Here on Earth, Danny North is still in high school, yet he holds in his heart and mind all the stolen outselves of 13 centuries of gatemages. The Families still want to kill him if they can’t control him - and they can’t control him; he is far too powerful.

On Westil, Wad is now nearly powerless - he lost everything to Danny in their struggle. Even if he can survive the revenge of his enemies, he must still somehow make peace with the Gatemage Daniel North, for when Danny took that power from Loki, he also took responsibility for the Great Gates. And when he comes face-to-face with the mages who call themselves Bel and Ishtoreth, he will understand just why Loki closed the gates all those centuries ago.

©2013 Orson Scott Card (P)2013 Blackstone Audio, Inc

Critic reviews

"Card weaves another in a chain of satisfying, teenager-pleasing fantasies…. Card has a grand old time romping around in the fields of comparative religion while letting a feud worthy of the Hatfields and the McCoys unfold, with much tongue-in-cheek humor but a touch of gore, too." (Kirkus Reviews)

"Familiarity with The Lost Gate is useful, but not essential, as Card gives readers enough background to have at least a partial understanding of the world he’s created….Defined characters and a highly imaginative story. For the author’s fans, a must-read." (Booklist)

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What listeners say about The Gate Thief

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Flashes of Great, Ok, and Bad. Overall: Meh.

What I liked:

Card manages to put together a fairly interesting structure of magic and how that creates the major conflict that drives the story. His exploration of the way magic works and the way that the characters discover it is quite interesting. His take on ancient pantheons as magic-wielding aliens come to earth is also insightful, forcing the reader to completely shift her thinking. The reader encounters plenty of unexpected actions and circumstances and that is all to the good. The book is unpredictable and that is enough to keep you listening.

The Ok:

The main character, Danny, is a retooling of the "super-powered teenager trying to lead a normal life" (as in My Secret Identity, Smallville, etc.) genre. Which goes ok, maybe even a little bit better than average with Danny's well-developed intellect, but complete ignorance of actual teenage interaction making for very appropriate awkwardness. Unfortunately, the high school friends he interacts with feel like they're made of cardboard. They seem developed only just enough that the story can move forward.

Also Wad's story line of protecting his world from incoming mages and looking for a way to get revenge on his former lover is not bad. Not great, but not bad; interesting, but haphazard. It's one notch above only existing to be the reflection of Danny's own magical discovery.

If the following things bother you, steer clear:

Rudniki should not be narrating this book. He has a less than versatile deep bass voice. This isn't particularly ideal for a coming of age novel where many of the characters are youths. Not to say that his voice is not pleasant, he just doesn't have the range to characterize teenagers and women. Rankin has a better range, but doesn't make bold characterizations.

This book bogs down around the various characters' banter. It is not witty, insightful, or entertaining. It will make you want to skip portions.

Some of the book's portrayal of teenagers is dissonant. I am not an expert on teenagers, and maybe some do think and talk the way they do in the book, but there are some things I think are a bit too out there. A teenage girl being loaded up on hormones, emotional and desirous of sex, I get. But one that needs her boyfriend's seed in her uterus and expresses it to him in those terms? The girls in the book are generally focused on procreation. Every time it comes up (often enough) you think, "seriously?"

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    4 out of 5 stars
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He didn't even turn into a golden swan.

I agree with the reviews that are put off by the infatuation of teenage pregnancy. Orson Scott Card's books often come across as a pedantically cyclical read, so when the topic get's brought up, suddenly all the teenage girls in the story are obsessed with it in the same very disturbing and stupefied way. Grabbing at men's waists and demanding men 'put their baby inside me,' was an approach my mother must have missed. It's incredibly insulting to young women that this is how their teenage interests are portrayed. Really think about your teenage experience, and try to count on one hand the number of girls in your school, who would do this, and throw themselves at boys like this.

The dialogue is all in the same kidney, this adds to the cycling feeling of the book. It could almost be one person arguing with them self. The sentence structure, word usage, lines of thought, etc. cohere so that there are some golden opportunities for OSC's brand of humor, but it's not often believable that you are listening to several people talk, just one man's interpretation of a conversation.

OSC tackles Christianity, and a lot of other religions, legends, and myths, in this book. I'm not religious, but if you are, fair warning, he reinterprets the big J into his canon. Neil Gaiman did this in American Gods, then went back and edited him out, and it probably saved him some angry readers.

Stefan Rudnicki has a super creaky deep voice, like someone is opening and shutting an old door. Emily Rankin tried to match his voice in this book, which made her voice croak and crack. And to get what they are saying, you can't just dim the volume until you can just barely hear the words. The croaking is still loud before the words fuzz out. It's okay in the short term, but after a few hours it starts to hurt. When I took my ear buds out, I couldn't hear all that well for a few days.

The storyline is original. The plot twists aren't too severe. The book ambles, but it stays pretty cut and dry sequential. It'll be great for a solid OSC fan, but it's not Ender's Game.

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The more I listened to it the less I liked it.

Disappointing
The story did not flow very well, it was like each chapter was written by a different person who only loosely followed what happened in the previous chapters

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VERY MIXED FEELINGS

Any additional comments?

The book is generally good but the thing i didn't like about it is the constant talk of 16yr olds wanting babies put their stomach or wanting to avoid babies put in their stomach. It comes across as very weird and disconcerting. The other thing is that there are a few tasteless descriptions eg someone says to another you look hungrier than a Jew in a concentration camp... really?? Because this book isn't meant to be a 'dark' book some conversations between charecters are in poor taste. Other than those two complaints, the book is really easy to follow and has an exciting storyline that will keep you hooked.

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Series Has Lost Its Way...

I don't know what happened to this story. I really enjoyed The Lost Gate and anxiously awaited book 2. Unfortunately The Gate Thief was a major let down.

This book really makes me wonder if OSC skipped over his teen years because it seems like he has no idea what teenagers are like. It's not as if his characters act like adults as some bad YA authors' protagonists do, they don't really act like any human being I've ever met. It's as if an android tried to write about human emotions based off of observations alone.

Danny North is obsessed with kissing girls, but also has some weird sexual repression/female purity issues going on. It doesn't help that all the teen girls in his life are walking wombs in waiting. They don't just want to have sex, they desperately want to get pregnant. Granted I'm no expert on the sex drives of teen girls, but I've never seen a single girl act like the girls in this novel do. It's just really weird, not exactly creepy just mind bogglingly odd and not normal. I don't know if he has strong religious beliefs about sex for procreation only that forces him to phrase teen sexual desire in this manner, but it's just strange and divorced from reality. To make it worse, the story spends an inordinately large amount of time exploring these feelings. It's true teens spend an inordinately large amount of time thinking about and discussing sex/relationships, but not like this.

Aside from poor representation of teen life, the rest of the story is lack luster compared to The Lost Gate. I lost interest in caring about Danny, Wad/Loki, and their version of the universe. The story does progress well enough, and OSC still knows how to tell a story with proper pacing. I just found myself struggling even to want the good characters to succeed. There were none of the endearing shenanigans of The Lost Gate(ie the Walmart scene). They talk about Danny being a trickster, but he doesn't do anything deserving of that title.

This story wasn't a wasted credit. The setting and magic system are interesting and fresh enough to keep me entertained. However I will have to carefully read reviews of book 3 before I decide to buy it.

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Encyclopedia Mage

Scott Card is my favorite writer. Ender's Game is the best Sci-Fi ever written. HIs Fantasy is second only to Robin Hobb, His short stories second only to Robert Reed. He even wrote a good scary book called Treasure Box. I have read lots of his books and will continue to read his books.

The first book in this series The Lost Gate is a five star read. What Card has done with this book and done with many of his later books, is turn them into lectures. It is like he has forgotten how to tell a story. This reads like an encyclopedia on Gates and Magic. There are long explanations on how gates work. Lots of names are thrown at you. There are long soliloquies on how to conduct yourself with friends. One I can remember off the top of my head was how to treat a guest. Card needs to fire his editor and quit giving his stuff to friends and family for their suggestions. Get an editor that will make him use his god given talents. Card is a religious man, so do what Jesus often did. He often used parables, not sermons.

Here are some five star Card books in no particular order: Stonefather, Treasure Box, Songmaster, A planet Called Treason (read this instead of the rewrite Treason.), The Memory of Earth, The Call of Earth, Ender's Shadow, Ender's Game, First Meeting, The Folk of the Fringe, Hart's Hope, Lost Boys, The Lost Gate, Seventh Son and the next two sequels. Audible has several of his short story collections that include some real good stories.

I like Rudnicki, but must agree with another reviewer, he is not suited to read teen characters.

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bearable to average

Would you try another book from Orson Scott Card and/or Stefan Rudnicki and Emily Rankin ?

the guy has written some amazing stories - I guess its hard to live up to your own best work - this certainly doesn't.

What could Orson Scott Card have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?

He seems to be losing the plot (in every way) between his first and second books - where the characters in the second books of his two latest series, are almost starting from scratch and often very different from the development in his first books. The second installment in the Pathfinder series really is a trainwreck, this isn't that bad, but he is certainly giving us a filler after doing a good job in the first book in the mithermage series.

What about Stefan Rudnicki and Emily Rankin ’s performance did you like?

Stefan Rudnicki is a great performer - Emily is ok, and next to stefan, comes across quite weak.

If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from The Gate Thief?

This book would be 1/3 the size if you cut out the unnecessary drivel - which, considering Orson boasts about only putting in dialogue that moves the story forward, is a big let down.

Any additional comments?

Orson really needs to sit down and create the entire story arc in one go, then go and write installments that fit to the arc - he is losing the plot between instalments.

I really hope this great writer can deliver to his earlier standard and doesn't finish his writing career slowly sputtering out

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    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Good sequel

This is the middle book of a planned trilogy. Many authors have had trouble with the middle of their trilogies; think of the Lord of the Rings. I liked the first book in this series better than this one, but I definitely plan to buy the next one.

I liked much about this book (and its predecessor). I like the double fantasy: Part of the action takes place here on Earth in the present and part of the action takes place on another planet which is more like your typical sword and sorcery fantasy world (Medieval setting; kings and peasants; swords and mages, etc.) I like the world-building. Card’s novels always show that he puts in considerable thought into how the science or fantasy work in his worlds. He really thinks about the background stuff. I like the two narrators. One, a man, narrates everything that takes place on Earth; and the other, a woman, narrates everything that takes place on the other planet. This makes it easy to follow the switches in location. I liked the explanation that different mythologies actually reflect families of mages who lived in particular parts of the world: One family lived in Scandinavia, so they are known in mythology as Odin, Thor, Loki, etc. Another family lived in Greece and were known in mythology as Zeus, Mercury, etc. I liked the unfolding of the plot. In the first book, the story is mostly about Danny trying to survive and trying to figure out how to use his powers without any living tutor to mentor him. But in this book, a deeper problem unfolds.

Now to the things I didn’t like. I didn’t like the amount of time spent on discussions of sex. Danny is an adolescent boy; this means he’s horny all the time. I get it. But it doesn’t interest me. I also didn’t like the portrayal of virtually every girl in the book (not the women; just the girls). It seemed that every single adolescent girl in the book was just as obsessed as Danny with sex, and they one-and-all come on to him. I have read other young adult books in which adolescent horniness reared its head and I didn’t mind it, but in this book I found it unpleasant. In fact, I didn’t care for most of the repartee among Danny and his high school friends. I didn’t feel that it contributed to the story, either. Maybe it will become more apparent in the third book why Card felt it necessary to add these kids.

Now I’d like to comment on the woman from North Carolina who says she can never read another Card book because Jesus is mentioned once in this book. She reminds me of those fanatic Christians who wouldn’t let their children read the Harry Potter books. (I had a 13 or 14-year-old student who was reading an adult romance novel that had quite a lot of pretty explicit sex, and that was okay with her mother, but she wasn’t allowed to read the Harry Potter books, because magic comes from the devil.) Don’t they understand the concept: FICTION? And in fact, I thought the question of whether Jesus was one of the mages in these families was left very much up in the air.

Okay, bottom line: I liked this book. As far as I can tell at this moment, I think the complete trilogy is going to be terrific. If you haven’t read the first book in this series, I would recommend that you do. Read them in order.

P.S. There is another story which Audible has which takes place on the second planet in this series and the magic system is the same. It is called “Stone Father” and it is novella-length. I liked it a lot.

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Not Ender

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

To a friend, no because I keep my nerdery close to the vest. But to a fantasy fan, YES!

Who was your favorite character and why?

I like the coolness of Stone. He's a nice guy with a consistent personality. I also like Wad/Loki. Loki is a tragic, smart, awful creature...

Which scene was your favorite?

When Danny drops the goons in the ocean. It was a glimpse into his potential abuse of power. I liked the emergence and abruptness of the act.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

Yep, I bing listen when I have been waiting for the story to continue.

Any additional comments?

Whatever you think of OSC, his offbeat politics, etc. He's a great story teller. This series is well worth a listen.

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    3 out of 5 stars
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Dull

Would you try another book from Orson Scott Card and/or Stefan Rudnicki and Emily Rankin ?

I have read everything Card has written, this book is pure formula. I hope it isn't a warning bell of things to come. The performance was great, the book was not.

Would you ever listen to anything by Orson Scott Card again?

Probably - because he has written well in the past and I hope he will again.

Which scene was your favorite?

I enjoyed the books beginning - the first two chapters drew you in. After that, it became predictable.

Did The Gate Thief inspire you to do anything?

no

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