Liked it - am looking forward to the 3rd

I woke up in the middle of the night worried about something (I won't spoil it by telling you what) then I realized - it's A BOOK! None of the things bothering me are real. I am a huge fan of Orson Scott Card I should mention, but this is an instance where the sequel is better than the first one. The main protagonist is a 17 yr old boy so bear that in mind as far as the workings of his mind, it is more mature than the first one -he's older so it should be. Relatable characters, fast paced and intense. And, it would seem, highly memorable.

More of a 4-star story for most of it but I started getting a little lost here and there in the final 1/4 of the book or so. Maybe an easier one to read in a book than audiobook so you can slow down/re-read easily any parts you tuned out of or didn't quite take in. Still good.

The Gate Thief was much improved from The Lost Gate, in my opinion. I enjoyed the further development in the magic lore and the discovery of the reason why Loki began eating gates.

I was a bit irritated by the fact that every girl that wasn't a mithermage wanted to get in Danny's pants, it seemed a little overkill to me.

This book was definitely a set-up for the last book in the Trilogy. Many of the characters are left in some majorly cliff-hanging situations, so it will be interesting to see what happens in the third book!

I really am enjoying the world building and the magic system of this series, but I have several issues with character treatments.

Is the way women are written in this series striking anyone else as really off? They seem to either be 'bitchy' or 'slutty' and every teen aged girl desperately wants the protagonist and some of them want him to "put a baby in them." There are so many non consensual sexual advances made, and I found many scenes to be completely off-putting. I'm also picking up on some homophobic vibes?

I'll probably finish this trilogy, but I'm also somewhat repulsed by it - I may be done with OSC after this.

This book only exists to keep you interested enough to progress to book 3. Only then will we know if the good of one can influence and overcome the misguideness of others.

This is where I make a bunch of hemming and hawwing noises, all the "Hrrrmmmm"s and the "weeelllll"s and such.
Let's start with the good parts:
The writing is good. It makes sense, it flows well, I understood it.
The characters continue from the first book. They don't change much, everything was pretty much as I'd expected. So...good.

But I got bored.

I know. That's awful. And yet, it is true. I just got tired of this story. I like Danny well enough but for someone so powerful, he isn't very interesting. I got horribly tired of girls trying to sex him up in order to impregnate themselves with his godly seed and him declining just in the nick of time. Hoo-ray, he is a shining example of a good boy. And since he's a god, he has great will power and can fend the ho's off when they come 'round. But do we have to keep hearing about it? We get it. He could get laid by pretty much anyone within in age range and probably plenty without but he is respectful of ho's. Sorry, women. He respects them even if they do not respect themselves in his presence. Now let's move on.

Spoiler

And then the final lesson? SEE WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU HAVE SEX? YOU RUIN THE WHOLE DAMNED WORLD! Which, come on, a little heavy handed, don't you think?

Yes, of course I like that Danny is different in that he's such an angelheart and his mistakes are rarely ever made out of self-serving reasons. I don't have a problem with that, I just have a problem with there being not much else to him. Supergood teenage boygod with hormones who can restrict impulses (obviously has superhuman strength), travel about via his gates, and goes to high school for the hell of it. Why doesn't have have some obsession, like collecting seashells? Learning to speak to dolphins (he's great at languages, after all)? Watching "Monster High"? (I don't think that's a show in his time period, actually) I dunno. He's like-able but boring, I guess, the bane to every nice guy's existence. It's ok, though, because everyone he knows is equally uninteresting. I think I mostly enjoyed Wad's story...and not his story, but the former-mistress/former-cave-dweller's story (I have no idea how her name is spelled and I simply can't be bothered to look it up...otherwise, I will lose my train of complaining and I'd run out of things to write) At least she had something to be passionate about. At least her trajectory was filled with strife and triumph and compromise.

I didn't see the point of this book except to learn that pretty much everyone but Danny is an asshole in some fashion and no one is to be trusted, ever. But I already knew that from living daily life. I don't even make gates and I figured that out.

There is another coming? I mean, if not, that's fine, but there are a few things left undone that I wanted to know about. Not a big deal, though. I'll survive without that knowledge and will probably have forgotten the questions by this time next month, so we're good. We're good.

There seemed to be way too much going on in this book, with far too many characters involved. Not as good (in my opinion) as the first in this series.

What if all of the ancient religions of Earth were based on a small subset of humanity which inherited certain supernatural or "Godlike" powers, and that those extra-talented humans still lived in our modern world, hidden in seclusion awaiting the right mixing of genes to reawaken those powers in their bloodlines? Orson Scott Card brings his detailed imagination to this premise in this second book in the "Mither Mages" series. Seen through a teen boy's eyes, we experience the dictatorial white trash existence of his "Northern" family upbringing, his desire to settle into the outside "drowther" world of normal humans and attend high school, and the awakening realization that he is the manfestation of the most powerful type of mage, which all of the families have sought for centuires to produce while promising to destroy. Meanwhile, on another world, his predecessor deals with palace intrigues and the collapsing of his plans to prevent another kind of mage (or demon) from crossing between the worlds and taking control of the powerful new mage. There are a lot of balls in the air in this one, but they are all interesting subplots. Imagine a main character who is basically Harry Potter learning that he is the reincarnation of Voldemort, and Hermione (and all the other girls he knows) is trying to sleep with him? Definitely a darker look at what the intersection of our world and the world of "magic" might look like. I can hardly wait for the third book, and all of the stuff that is set to hit the fan.

Meh. Kind of a disappointing sequel to the Lost Gate book. I liked the story in general, but it was a little bland in the telling.