The Wreck of Heaven (The World Gates, Book 2) [Mass Market Paperback]

Holly Lisle (Author)

Book Description

Series: World Gates | Publication Date: March 25, 2003

There are doors into other worlds -- and those who cross over are changed forever ...

Two women have discovered the way into a new reality -- one so close to Earth that events there have shattering repercussions here. On Oria -- a wondrous paradise and nightmare both -- Molly McColl has powers she never imagined ... and a destiny that threatens her life, her love, and her soul. While Lauren Dane must use an extraordinary, newfound magic to protect her young son -- and to join with her sister on a quest that will shake the foundations of Heaven itself. For a serpentine evil now threatens the worldchain -- a soulless, immortal enemy who feeds on the death of worlds, and who is now turning its hungry, malevolent gaze on Oria ... and Earth.

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: 352 pages
• Publisher: Harper Voyager (March 25, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0380818388
• ISBN-13: 978-0380818389
• Product Dimensions: 6.6 x 4.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #130,435 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

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Death Can't Keep a Good Woman Down, May 23, 2003

By 

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

This review is from: The Wreck of Heaven (The World Gates, Book 2) (Mass Market Paperback)

The Wreck of Heaven is the second novel in the World Gates series, following Memory of Fire. In the previous volume, Molly McColl has died to revive her nephew Jake, her half-sister Lauren Hotchkiss Dane has killed a rron as well as the traitorous Sentinels in Oria, and Sheriff Eric MacAvery and his deputy Pete Stark have killed the Sentinel traitors in Cat Creek. Lauren and Jake are back in Cat Creek, having attended Molly's funeral, and are now trying to recover from all the trauma. Pete and Lauren have been inducted by the survivors into the Cat Creek Sentinel's circle.

In this novel, Jake refuses to go near the big mirror in their hallway and is even unhappy entering the kitchen. He has begun to talk again, but he is much too passive. She has just returned from the store and Pete has dropped by, so Lauren asks him to sit on the stairs with Jake as she puts up the groceries. Pete teases Jake about a story that he had once liked, but now scares him. Pete insists the scary pumpkin is saying that he has a cookie in his tummy and Jake knows that it is really saying "Boo, Boo". They both get the giggles and Jake even lets Pete carry him into the kitchen without protest.

Then Lauren discovers a messenger from Oria in her kitchen and quickly maneuvers Pete out of the house. The messenger states that Molly has returned from the dead through the powers of the Vodi necklace. Lauren quickly makes arrangements to be gone for a while and takes Jake with her to Oria. She finds Molly at Copper House and they start preparing for their roles as planned by their parents. However, Jake is more precocious than expected and manages to open a link leading to his deceased father in the afterlife.

Pete finds a note from Lauren on his kitchen table and decides that she probably used a small gate to deliver it. Although she writes that she is taking Jake to visit his grandparents, Pete notices that she has left her primary keyring with him and, after visiting the house, finds that the car is parked in a shed and that nothing much is missing. He reckons that foul play is unlikely, given the evidence, and that Lauren probably has been called back to Oria. To cover for her, he passes on the note to the other Sentinels and adds a few embellishments.

This novel extends the storyline to explain the difference between the old gods and the dark gods as well as the nature of the disasters that have destroyed worldline after worldline. We also learn something more about the rron and their motivation.

The romance between Molly and Seolar develops and even continues after her death and resurrection, but not without some hard moments. Seolar knows that his duty to the Veyar is primary in his life, but now he begins to realize that, without Molly, his life will not have any joy or satisfaction.

This novel is full of action and excitement. Dangers arise and are handled somehow. Once again, the story focuses on the interpersonal relationships between Molly and Seolar as well as between Lauren and Pete, but not as much so as the previous novel.

One interesting scene is the confrontation between Lauren and the Administrator in the Afterlife. Maybe a bit of catharsis for the author after a bad encounter with bureaucracy. Probably a good thing that she didn't write about Hell.

Recommended for Lisle fans and anyone who else enjoys a new approach to the salvation of the universe plot.

-Arthur W. Jordin

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Another good one from the author of Memory of Fire, October 8, 2003

By 

Mark "Fantasybooks" (STANFORD-LE-HOPE, United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Wreck of Heaven (The World Gates, Book 2) (Mass Market Paperback)

The Wreck of Heaven follows closely on the heels of Holly Lisle's previous book: Memory of Fire. The story begins a day after book one ends with Molly Mcoll, the Vodi, arisen from the dead. Luaren, her sister that she never knew, has returned to Earth with her son Jake and the other sentinels. She grieves for the sister she believes is dead, but a messenger sent from downworld soon has Lauren betraying the sentinels and charging back to her sister's side.

Holly Lisle still seems to prefer Lauren over Molly, as she did in the first book, but this time she abandons the sentinels on Earth where they belong to concentrate on Lauren's relationship with her sister and with Molly's resurrection. Molly is alive, but her soul now resides in heaven--gone to its eternal rest and reward. The reserected Molly believes her life is empty of meaning now that she has died and come back without her soul, but worse that this, she believes she is now kin to the dark gods. The dark gods are evil and they get worse and worse the more times they are killed and resurrected. Molly fears for the future.

And she is right to fear, for one of the dragon-like "Rhon" has a plan to make Molly into a dark god in his image. He will kill Molly over and over bringing her back each time to suffer death anew, until there is nothing of the old Molly Mcoll remaining.

I gave this four stars because I enjoyed reading it. It was fast paced and an easy read, but it suffered from using Lauren's point of view too much. I wanted, and still do want, more about Molly. The sentinels might as well not have been in this book. Pete is given a fairly interesting set of scenes to play, yet they seem to have no relation to the first book and feel redundant to me.

Buy the book, but be aware that this is book 2 of a series. Go into this one expecting loose ends to remain flapping in the breeze.

Mark E. Cooper
Warrior Within (ISBN: 0-9545122-0-0)

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars One Vision, July 16, 2003

By 

David DeWeese (Laurinburg, NC United States) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: The Wreck of Heaven (The World Gates, Book 2) (Mass Market Paperback)

The second book of The World Gates-The Wreck of Heaven-continues the saga of Lauren Dane, Molly McColl, the folks of southeastern North Carolina and Oria. Although not quite as engaging as the first book of the series Memory of Fire, The Wreck of Heaven is excellent enough to keep the reader engaged in the series. By novel's end, the reader definitely is looking forward to the third installment of the series.

As seen in Memory of Fire, Molly McColl dies while saving the life of Lauren Dane's son Jake. Because Molly holds the position of Vodi on Oria, she wears a necklace that magically refuses to allow her to die. Unfortunately, her rebirth brought back a soulless Molly McColl.

The two sisters-Lauren and Molly-begin questing for knowledge on what happened to former Vodi. While they work, dark forces begin working toward the destruction of the two women. Jake, who has never gotten over the death of his father, somehow manages to transport himself to the afterlife in search of his father. Lauren is forced to follow her son in an effort to try to save four souls: her husband's, Jake's, Molly's, and her own.

Meanwhile Pete Stark definitely proves to be more than a mere deputy, the Cat Creek Sentinels begin wondering about Lauren, and dragons surface as book two winds toward a satisfactory finale. Characters, plot, setting, and all the other elements of great fantasy work well in The Wreck of Heaven.