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The World Gates #1

Memory of Fire

holly lisle

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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.

384 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published April 1,2002
Series
The World Gates

This edition

Format
384 pages, Mass Market Paperback
Published
April 28, 2002 by HarperCollins Publishers
ISBN
9780380818372
ASIN
038081837X
Language
English

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About the author

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holly lisle

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Holly Lisle has been writing fiction professionally since 1991, when she sold FIRE IN THE MIST, the novel that won her the Compton Crook Award for best first novel. She has to date published more than thirty novels and several comprehensive writing courses. She has just published WARPAINT, the second stand-alone novel 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.”

You can find Holly on her personal site:
Hollylisle.com

You can find Cadence Drake, Holly's currently in-progress series, on her site:
CadenceDrake.com

You can find Holly's books, courses, writing workshops, and so on here:
The HowToThinkSideways.com Shop, as well as on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and in a number of bookstores in the US and around the world.

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Community Reviews

Rating(4 / 5.0, 38 votes)
5 stars
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38 reviews All reviews
Profile Image for Kimberly .
KrowKrof
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 1,2025
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A great premise with solid world-building and largely relatable characters. I'll likely read more.

Rated down because I'm terribly confused why a character who knows that Godd are just regular people from an Upworld would still be carrying Christian guilt about being a lesbian.

Also, Molly's military training and refusal yo give in to Stockholm Syndrome lasted....3 weeks and then she fell deeply in love with a guy with zero real knowledge of him beyond a surface story or three?
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Lub
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 1,2025
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This was boring, filled with soap opera cliches, and generally made very little sense.
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earthtrap
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 1,2025
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Very engaging! The plot may not have been the strongest, but storytelling definitely had a pull to it. Kept my interest high. :)
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Stallk
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 1,2025
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I bought this one evening after book group on a whim. I'd heard of Holly Lisle, and figured I'd check her out. I enjoyed it, but mainly because it was such a quick read, rather than because I was really into it. I liked the small-town conspiracy aspect, and I liked the idea of the mirror-gates. But the actual other world and the magical laws associated with it were not so inspiring to me.
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LeoTheTree
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 1,2025
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I loved this science fiction/fantasy novel by Holly Lisle. I was hooked at the opening scene, and the pace of the novel kept me reading to the end. There was a lot of mystery in the back story, and the worlds traveled were easy to visualize. Compelling characters, good plot twists, and fascinating places to explore.
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phereia
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 1,2025
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I have taken part in a lot of Holy Lisle's classes and seminars, and found them so helpful as a writer that I thought it was about time to read one of her novels. You know, to see if the teacher can...well, do. And can she ever! I really enjoyed this book. The characters were fully formed people I'm pretty sure I will run into in the store later today. The setting was awesome. I found the entire premise, that there are layers of worlds up and down and that some can cross over, to be fascinating. I won't ever look at a mirror the same way again! The plot had me guessing from beginning to end, in a good way. I don't want to leave a spoiler here, so I'll just say it's always the little things that come back and bite you in the arse! Loved that, loved the world of Oria. That the layers of worlds is an explanation for all our mythological gods is awesome.

In short, this is a really fun fantasy read, full of mystery and suspense, and a few life lessons. If you like fantasy mixed with your reality, you'll like this. And if you are an aspiring writer, give her clinics and online classes a try. You'll be glad you did!
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