The Seventh Gate
is a 1994 fantasy novel by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, the conclusion to
the seven-volume Death Gate Cycle.
Here, as the dragon-snakes wage war against the Labyrinth Patryns, Alfred and
company race Xar to the Seventh Gate.
As a novel, The
Seventh Gate is an engaging page-turner. As a conclusion to this series,
however, it’s merely adequate. This book is substantially shorter than the
others in this series, and it tends to center on action rather than character.
This action is good but unspectacular; nothing wildly unexpected happens, and there’s
nothing approximating a “wow” moment, but it is all appropriately high-stakes and
climactic. All the storylines are resolved in passably satisfying ways, all the
character arcs are taken to more or less logical places (however, a more
satisfying resolution for a number of characters would have been nice, most
notably Xar).
The Seventh Gate feels
sloppy sometimes, much in the way that Into
the Labyrinth did. We’re still playing fast and loose with the magic rules
established in the first few volumes, for example, and Haplo’s willingness to
seal his people inside the Labyrinth feels too easily arrived at.
However, the biggest problem with The Seventh Gate is that it’s self-indulgently sentimental; hand-in-hand
with this, the handling of the “higher power” the characters have been seeking
throughout the series is eminently disappointing. Instead of any meaningful
connection with the divine, we’re ham-fistedly presented with a muddled
postmodern, Oprahesque power-within denouement that, while fitting the character arcs of Haplo
and Alfred, makes little sense
theologically within the context of this series (the last chapter is
particularly cringeworthy in this respect). Unanswered questions remain
regarding God, the origin of evil, and the purported deity of Krenka-Anris. All
this decreases the impact of this book: since the end of Elven Star, we’ve been working toward a big theological payoff, and
we don’t get anything close.
Faltering steps over the last few volumes knock The Death Gate Cycle out of consideration as one of the all-time great fantasy works,
and deservedly so, but it is, overall, a very solid, very imaginative series,
and one with some truly great highlights; it’s just too bad that nearly all of
them came in volumes 1–5. In short, then, The
Seventh Gate reflects the series as a whole: flawed, but worthwhile.
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