Listening at the Gate
by Betsy James

Can you have what you wish for?

What is the price?

For seventeen-year-old Kat, her dreams have come true: Nall, the mysterious young man she rescued from the seas, is hers at last. But war is breaking out along the coast. Kat's beloved brother Dai is taken prisoner. And who ­ or what ­ is Nall? As the world she knows is falling apart, Kat and Nall set out on a journey that will take them beyond themselves and beyond the last boundary of all, to the Gate where the world is born.

"This wondrous and mournful epic uses myth and song to carve the weight of the world. ... James's heavily romantic tale never romanticizes, burdening love and life with warmth but also doom. Stunning philosophical insights emerge while myths, songs, chants and hand slaps show groundedness and culture. James shatters certain key expectations yet remains profoundly archetypal-full of pain, beauty and heft."

-Kirkus Review

 

"This mythic quest revervberates like the thundering sea with reconciliation of opposites: sea and earth, seal and bear, silence and sound, male and female, Rig and Leagueman, hatred and understanding. Kat's shifting, often conflicting emotions anchor this epic saga of the human heart. ... Far more ambitious than its predecessors, at once more philosophical and sensual, and written with a sure poetic hand, this title redraws the pattern of the classic hero's quest."

- School Library Journal - Starred Review

 

"Tightly plotted, tautly written, bursting with passion and poetry, Listening at the Gate will transport you to a world both hauntingly familiar and utterly new ­ full of love, grief, hope, and wild adventure."

­ Ursula K. Le Guin

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The History of The Seeker Chronicles/Listening at the Gate

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