Gods Old and Dark (The World Gates, Book 3) [Mass Market Paperback]

Holly Lisle (Author)

Book Description

Series: World Gates | Publication Date: March 30, 2004

The spellbinding conclusion to the magnificent epic of fantastic adventure and worlds within worlds.

Live magic has returned to the Earth -- as the demons of every universe gather to destroy it ...

The World Gates offer passage into countless realms, dimensions, and nightmares, changing forever those few with the courage to cross over. Lauren Dane and Molly McColl, two sisters transformed, now hold the future of all living things in their hands -- for Lauren's mission to bring life-giving magic back to Earth and other dying worlds has not gone unnoticed. And Molly's power to protect her will not hold against the countless ancient evils that are closing in. For the maelstrom is coming to drag down gods and humans alike. And darkness will surely prevail unless a last, desperate stand is made against the dreaded Night Watch, eater of worlds.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Holly Lisle has been doing the pro novelist gig since 1992.  Prior to that, she was an on-again, off-again missionaries' kid, high-school entrepreneur, and once past graduation, a newspaper ad rep, a sign-painter/commercial artist, the "window girl" at a McDonald's, a guitar teacher for absolute beginners, a singer at local restaurants, and because all of those together paid starvation wages, she went to nursing school the next year, and two years later was an RN.

For ten years.  

She paid off her student loan the same year she got her first three-book contract, and...well...she's been writing for her supper ever since.

She is active online, providing courses teaching what she has discovered about writing fiction as well as maintaining her own weblog and website, HollyLisle.com. And with more than a million books in print via commercial publishers, she has now moved to publishing herself.

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Harper Voyager (March 30, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0380818396
• ISBN-13: 978-0380818396
• Product Dimensions: 6.6 x 4.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,151,648 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Holly Lisle has been writing fiction professionally since 1991, when she sold FIRE IN THE MIST, the novel that won the Compton Crook Award for best first novel. She has to date published more than thirty novels and several comprehensive writing courses. She is currently working on the second book in her Cadence Drake series.

Holly had an ideal childhood for a writer...which is to say, it was filled with foreign countries and exotic terrains, alien cultures, new languages, the occasional earthquake, flood, or civil war, and one story about a bear, which follows:

"So. Back when I was ten years old, my father and I had finished hunting ducks for our dinner and were walking across the tundra in Alaska toward the spot on the river where we'd tied our boat. We had a couple miles to go by boat to get back to the Moravian Children's Home, where we lived.

"My father was carrying the big bag of decoys and the shotgun; I was carrying the small bag of ducks.

"It was getting dark, we could hear the thud, thud, thud of the generator across the tundra, and suddenly he stopped, pointed down to a pie-pan sized indentation in the tundra that was rapidly filling with water, and said, in a calm and steady voice, "That's a bear footprint. From the size of it, it's a grizzly. The fact that the track is filling with water right now means the bear's still around."

"Which got my attention, but not as much as what he said next.


" 'I don't have the gun with me that will kill a bear,' he told me. 'I just have the one that will make him angry. So if we see the bear, I'm going to shoot him so he'll attack me. I want you to run to the river, follow it to the boat, get the boat back home, and tell everyone what happened.'

"The rest of our walk was very quiet. He was, I'm sure, listening for the bear. I was doing my damnedest to make sure that I remembered where the boat was, how to get to it, how to start the pull-cord engine, and how to drive it back home, because I did not want to let him down.

"We were not eaten by a bear that night...but neither is that walk back from our hunt for supper a part of my life I'll ever forget.

"I keep that story in mind as I write. If what I'm putting on paper isn't at least as memorable as having a grizzly stalking my father and me across the tundra while I was carrying a bag of delicious-smelling ducks, it doesn't make my cut."

Cheerfully,
Holly Lisle

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing Writer Strikes Again!, April 11, 2004

By 

Stephen Kersten (Columbus, Ohio) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Gods Old and Dark (The World Gates, Book 3) (Mass Market Paperback)

This book, concluding the cycle begun in Memory of Fire, holds the reader's attention until the last word. The writing is amazing; not a wasted word. The scope and drama are breathtaking; the detail is so well thought out and beautifully revealed that I am simply in awe of Ms. Lisle's talent! From page 1 of Memory of Fire, through the wonder-filled The Wreck of Heaven, and to the very last word of Gods Old and Dark, Ms. Lisle has captivated me. I'm left haunted by a story that resonates deeply into today's world, politics, and society. An amazing fantasy to rank with the best. Thank you, Ms. Lisle, for your work--never simple, always beautiful, compulsively readable, a real masterpiece. Truly amazing. I'll be in a daze for days!

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Keep your facts straight, March 28, 2005

By 

Frederick D. Schulkind (Gaithersburg, MD USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Gods Old and Dark (The World Gates, Book 3) (Mass Market Paperback)

This book provides a satisfactory conclusion to the World Gates series. The every-day reality is enough like our own that we can believe there really are gates between worlds up, down, forward, backward, and sideways. The heroine is just a bit too perfect. Some annoying inconsistencies from the 1st 2 books have crept in, and the author has not fully thought out the immortality concept that is largely limited to this book. She could have done better.

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Conclusion for Now, April 19, 2004

By 

Arthur W. Jordin (Smyrna, GA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Gods Old and Dark (The World Gates, Book 3) (Mass Market Paperback)

Gods Old and Dark is the third (and concluding) novel in the World Gates series, following The Wreck of Heaven. In the previous volume, Baanraak starts forcing Holly to die and be reborn so as to shape her personality into the Night Watch pattern. He catches her once without the Vodi necklace and she was almost lost forever. Meanwhile, Lauren finds a secret message in the notebooks and learns that her parents had intended Molly to be her protector while she herself brought magic back to the Earth and to the dead worlds up the line.

In this novel, Molly is busy exterminating Night Watch teams and Lauren is creating conduits for the magic to flow back up the world lines. Aril, the Master of the Night Watch, notices the magic returning to the Earth and messily terminates all his fieldmasters for overlooking this development. He then promotes their assistants to replace them and provides specific instructions for the situation. He also dispatches assassins to track down Lauren and sends his assistant, Rekkathav, to observe the operation.

After Lauren is attacked by the Night Watch during a downworld foray and again within her own home, the Cat Creek Sentinels suddenly notice that Lauren is violating Council policy. A couple of hard-liners want to terminate her activities in a permanent manner, but the rest vote to wait and see. It does help that Lauren has an old god on her side who is capable of great havoc using the new influx of magic.

In this story, Lauren and the Cat Creek Sentinels learn the secret of immortality and the pain thereof. One Sentinel gets her first taste of combat and very nearly goes berserk. The FBI office in Charlotte performs a good service for the Cat Creek Sentinels. And Baanraak is ambushed by Molly and suffers a split personality.

This volume provides a conclusion of sorts, but the story continues past the end of the book. Maybe the author will return to this universe some day, for it has the potential for many other stories. In the meanwhile, we will have a new fantasy to read in 2005: Talyn.

Highly recommended for Lisle fans and for anyone else who enjoys tales of high magic, interesting societies and complex relationships.

-Arthur W. Jordin