I honestly didn't know what to expect with this one, but I was very pleasantly surprised to find a magic system that incorporates every myth of gods and creates families out of them, weak with time but always hoping for the potential to get much, much more powerful. 
 That only happens with Gate magic. 
 Enter Danny, learning that he can bend space and time and learning much about himself as he leaves his scary folks and their community to become a thief. It's a perfect field for someone who can jump anywhere. :) 
 There's a lot more, too, of course, and the end was fascinating and open to so much goodness... but the one thing that really stands out the most is the post word. 
 Anyone who's been a big fan of Card's early short fiction will be very pleasantly surprised that this whole novel has the feel of some of his most imaginative works. That's saying quite a bit. I still have a grand memory of them that led me into a life-long love of reading Card in general and not just because he wrote a few of my absolute favorites, like Ender's Game or A Planet Called Treason. :) 
 I'm still quite amazed that he can write such cool things and do it so engagingly. He deserves respect. His personal opinions on some topics aside, his regular writing is quite fine and always entertaining. I personally don't think he's lost his touch at all. I love the ideas going on here. If he does have issues in RL, it's not showing up in his novels. In fact, I'm very interested in plowing right through all three of these to see where it'll head!