Memory of Fire (The World Gates, Book 1)

Memory of Fire (The World Gates, Book 1) Review

From the moment Molly McColl is dragged from her bed, kicking and fighting, Holly Lisle's Memory of Fire rips along at an incredible pace. We're hauled off to another world that seems like a familiar place but it's very different, with feuding non-human societies, prophecies of doom and a prison shielded in copper. Back in our world, the situation's even worse. The Sentinels, the guardians of the pathways between worlds, are trying to sort out some anomalous trans-world traffic, and the possibility that someone on the inside has betrayed them.

Lisle has created an extraordinary and tightly woven set of worlds and rules, with intriguing constructions like a chain of upworlds and downworlds, threads of causality that seep through, spanning dimensions, that can affect each other, sometimes with subtle results, occasionally you end up with sweeping destruction.

There is nothing I love more in fantasy than an author's inventive use of traditional devices: mirrors that lead to another realm, "gods" that walk among us, ancient jewelry with protective powers. These ideas cross cultures. We understand a mirror as a magical device, but it is the storyteller's genius that turns it into something unconventional. We don't know where it leads, why it was left for us to find, or what happens to us when we touch it or step through it. We're compelled to find out.

Memory of Fire: Simple and splendid, effortless to read, impossible to put down.

I'm sorry to admit that I have not read enough of Holly Lisle's work. I read her blog and have browsed her essays on publishing and writing. I see her books on the shelves. Hey, I'm always keen to correct my faults--just one more step on my journey to being fault-free!

Memory of Fire (The World Gates, Book 1) Overview

Lauren Dane discovers a doorway to another reality in Cat Creek, North Carolina -- and she crosses over, driven by a strange compulsion she can neither resist nor comprehend. Molly McColl is brought there against her will -- kidnapped from her trailer and carried into a realm that traps her, terrifies her...yet offers her a strange and wondrous escape.

In an extraordinary universe of magic and monsters, two strangers sharing only pain and loss must now pursue the destiny that has united them. Because worlds are suddenly threatened by an evil beyond imagining -- the world they have entered...and the one the have left behind.

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