That finished date is an estimate.
I am an Orson Scott Card, despite his conservative politics and all the ranting he did a little while ago about gay marriage. He tells a good story and is clever and inventive. The Lost Gate is a good story--the old gods have left, the gates to their world, Westil, have closed, thanks to Loki, it seems, and the ones left behind, called mages, live apart from us lesser beings, cultivating and preserving their powers. There are some, like Danny, of the North Family (think Odin--each family seems to have a mythology associated with it, like the Greeks and here the Norse), who seemingly have powers and is abused for it.

Or does he? Danny is a gatemage and if he can learn to use his powers, if his clan, his Family, can have access to them--but Danny has other ideas. And so the adventure begins, both here and on Westil. I love Card's clever invention of levels of magery: for example, those who work in stone, Stonefathers or mothers, Rockbrothers, Pebblefriends, and so on.

This was fun to read and a page turner. What I didn't like was what seems to be Card's ignoring of the greater diversity of being human, such as no gay mages, and only the traditional family