« The Gate of Gods » Martha Wells

At the start of the final volume in Wells’s imaginative and complex Fall of Ile–Rien trilogy (after 2004’s The Ships of Air), her resourceful and witty heroine, Tremaine Valiarde, and a ragtag band of followers have the magic of the Viller spheres to help resist the almost invincible invading Gardier. Unfortunately, too many pieces of the puzzle remain missing for them to effectively defend what’s left of the country of Ile–Rien, let alone liberate the rest of it. When the sphere–entrapped sorcerer Arisilde sends them a spell that eventually leads to “a train station for world–gates, Tremaine and her cohorts may have finally found a way to drive the Gardier out of Ile–Rien.