Children of the Mind by Orson Scott Card

With each of these 'borrowings' from Mithermages, you'd think that what remained would start shrinking, but on the contrary, it grew. The philotic connections from Xenocide and Children of the Mind were also originally developed as being part of the physical underpinnings of the Mithermages system. In a way the Greensong in Red Prophet is an echo of it. I was tempted, when I started the Alvin Maker series, to use the Mithermages magic system in those books. OSC: The world and the magic system have been sitting in the back of my mind, surfacing now and then in odd ways. How have you developed the world over the last 30 years? You first conceived of the world of Westil in 'Sandmagic,' a story published in 1979. GR: The Lost Gate is a contemporary fantasy that was a long time in the making. I found the magic working to explain not only the gods of all the Indo-European pantheons, but also things like tiny fairies, giants, trolls, ghosts, poltergeists, golems, werewolves, and other shape changers-basically everything but vampires, for the sole reason that I detest them in fiction. Setting it partly on Earth meant that I could fit it into our existing history. I'm telling the reader what these 'gods' and 'fairies' really are, and anywhere that human folklore differs from my account, that was because humans just didn't understand, particularly because the Westilians were deliberately trying to confuse them. But because it's fantasy, I don't have to match up with the folklore and mythology perfectly.

I already knew a lot-you don't study history for 50 years without picking up a bit of general knowledge about most everything.

I didn't have to steep myself in anything, beyond looking up a few names. Orson Scott Card: That's the great thing about writing fantasy. Did you steep yourself in mythology and legends to write this world? You include references across various cultures, from the Greeks to the Norse to the Phrygians. Exiled from the world of Westil and trapped on Earth, these mages wield many kinds of magic and are known to humans as the gods of antiquity-Odin, Thor, Freya. Goodreads: Mage Danny North is raised in a family of gods, one of many families of beings called the Mithermages.

Children of the Mind by Orson Scott Card