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mfeezell's review against another edition
3.0
A depressed silver-haired waif of a man travels the world to escape his mommy issues and go on a hero’s journey, accidentally establishing an (authoritarian?) oligarchy in the process. Angry old homophobic wizards pray night and day for his downfall, which only makes him more powerful, sadly indirectly resulting in his twink death.
ngreads's review against another edition
5.0
I wasn’t sure how I’d feel about this one. I went into it pretty much blind, only knowing that it was part of Recluce (which I had really enjoyed the first book of), and that it was written in third-person-present tense, which is a writing style I’m not a huge fan of.
Then I started reading, and this book wouldn’t leave my mind. I couldn’t stop thinking about it, and I never wanted to put it down.
The Saga of Recluce (so far, at least) is a really unique series to me. Both books I’ve read of it have been very slow, explaining little and just asking the reader to exist in the world, experiencing the magic and the culture with the main character. Modesitt also doesn’t really explain much - everything is presented through show rather than tell. It can be a bit frustrating at times, wanting to know more about what’s happening, but it also made for a unique reading experience.
The story follows Creslin as he struggles with the balance of holding to the pacifism and order that his magic demands while struggling with the constant hard situations and decisions he is forced to make.
The story is also about the balance of power in relationships. The balance of politics and trade. The balance of chaos and order.
Even the book itself is balanced, the end and beginning perfectly reflected.
This isn’t for everyone. It’s slow. It explains little. It expects a lot of the reader, demanding the audience to piece things together.
But for me, I absolutely loved it. And if you’re interested in something beautiful and different from most fantasy I’ve seen on the shelves, I highly recommend it.
As a side note, this book also has pasta in it, one of the very VERY few high fantasy books I’ve seen that does. So immediate bonus points for that. Not to mention the purely amazing onomatopoeias that are sprinkled liberally throughout the whole thing. LOVE IT.
Then I started reading, and this book wouldn’t leave my mind. I couldn’t stop thinking about it, and I never wanted to put it down.
The Saga of Recluce (so far, at least) is a really unique series to me. Both books I’ve read of it have been very slow, explaining little and just asking the reader to exist in the world, experiencing the magic and the culture with the main character. Modesitt also doesn’t really explain much - everything is presented through show rather than tell. It can be a bit frustrating at times, wanting to know more about what’s happening, but it also made for a unique reading experience.
The story follows Creslin as he struggles with the balance of holding to the pacifism and order that his magic demands while struggling with the constant hard situations and decisions he is forced to make.
The story is also about the balance of power in relationships. The balance of politics and trade. The balance of chaos and order.
Even the book itself is balanced, the end and beginning perfectly reflected.
This isn’t for everyone. It’s slow. It explains little. It expects a lot of the reader, demanding the audience to piece things together.
But for me, I absolutely loved it. And if you’re interested in something beautiful and different from most fantasy I’ve seen on the shelves, I highly recommend it.
As a side note, this book also has pasta in it, one of the very VERY few high fantasy books I’ve seen that does. So immediate bonus points for that. Not to mention the purely amazing onomatopoeias that are sprinkled liberally throughout the whole thing. LOVE IT.
mary_soon_lee's review against another edition
4.0
This is the second book in [a:L.E. Modesitt Jr.|1301649|L.E. Modesitt Jr.|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1207333645p2/1301649.jpg]'s fantasy series "The Saga of Recluce." I found the opening pages the weakest: confusing, rather than intriguing. Beyond the opening pages, the first half of the book proved to be a mostly-standard fantasy adventure, with a young, mostly-likable hero facing hardship and danger. I like standard fantasy adventures, and I enjoyed it. In the second half the book turned, hooking me more deeply, both on an emotional level and in the challenges the characters confronted. I would give the first half a rating of 3 out of 5 stars, the second half 4 out of 5 stars, and will round up to 4 out of 5 stars overall, as I've liked other books by Modesitt.
Spoiler
Mild spoiler alert: the hero of the book grows up in a culture where the women are the warriors and the men are viewed as the weaker sex. While this does not have the groundbreaking feel of a work like [b:The Left Hand of Darkness|18423|The Left Hand of Darkness|Ursula K. Le Guin|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1388229638s/18423.jpg|817527], it is still worth noting.jocelyn822's review against another edition
adventurous
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.0
sharanyasarathy's review against another edition
1.0
Ok for all you smug souls, don't think I didn't know this book was going to be bad when I started reading it. However, I was looking for a different kind of bad. Like, Daughters of Darkness bad! I wanted a feel-good YA fantasy novel and I was willing to sacrifice writing to get there. But what this book did end up being was a scattered plot, whiny unsatisfying characters, and a whole lot of misogyny masquerading as equality (yet again... see my Blue Mars review). Creslin comes from a "matriarchal" society which is basically just our society with the genders swapped. Is this supposed to engender sympathy for women oppressed IRL, assuming that the reader is the traditional insecure dude that regularly consumes this type of bad YA sword/magic fantasy? Perhaps. What it does do however, is barrage the reader with passages and passages about the tyranny of women and their complete abuse of any and all power. Passages which would probably induce feelings pretty anti-woman in the reader...
Even besides the claims of misandry, the book has no redeeming qualities. Period. The world is not well built, the writing is bad, the dialogue somehow worse, and every interaction between Creslin and Megaera made me gag.
I read this book so you don't have to!! Luckily it took me like 2 hours or so, so I'm not too bitter.
Even besides the claims of misandry, the book has no redeeming qualities. Period. The world is not well built, the writing is bad, the dialogue somehow worse, and every interaction between Creslin and Megaera made me gag.
I read this book so you don't have to!! Luckily it took me like 2 hours or so, so I'm not too bitter.
mxsallybend's review against another edition
4.0
The first time I encountered The Saga of Recluce, I remember being somewhat bewildered by the progression from The Magic of Recluce to The Towers of the Sunset. Instead of picking up Lerris' story, as I would have expected of a traditional narrative, L. E. Modesitt Jr. catapults us back almost an entire millennium to tell the story of Creslin and the founding of Recluce.
Unusual and unorthodox, especially with the following book, The Magic Engineer, jumping forward again to a point between the two books, but that non-linear storytelling is part of the series' charm.
The Towers of the Sunset is part coming-of-age story and part quest tale, overlaid with a heavy dose of world-building. I'll get to the first two items in a moment, but I want to talk a bit about the world-building first. There are political, religious, and cultural elements introduced here that are absolutely fascinating. Where other authors would have settled for a typical matriarchy, Modesitt crafts a gender-flipped society where roles are reversed because of a mysterious mythology known as "The Legend" that adds a layer of intrigue to Creslin's story.
The other aspect of world-building that really excited me about this book in particular is the deeper exploration of the magic system, based not on good versus evil, but on chaos versus order. It's a fascinating system, well-defined, and based as much on science and philosophy as anything mystical. It's also the first fantasy novel I can remember that really wowed me with the use of magic. This is big-time magic, with large-scale spells that not only have impact, but consequences. The weather magic in particular is amazing, especially when Creslin has no clear concept of what he's doing or how, but it's even more interesting after the mechanics are explained.
Getting back to the story, the plotting of Creslin's coming-of-age is a little thin, and it jumps around a bit more than I would have liked, but it certainly has its moments. The mountainside escape from his mother's guards is great, and his magical enslavement on the Wizard's road breathes some new excitement into the tired old trope of lost memories. It's once he and Megaera finally come together, sharing a violent, tension-filled sea voyage to Recluce, that the story really takes off, and the way they begin building a new society is far more interesting than you might expect.
Along the way, Modesitt explores some complex questions of power, morality, gender politics, and family drama. Some of those concepts seem a little dated on a reread but, looking back over a quarter century, it reminds me of how daring and innovative they were for the time. The Towers of the Sunset may seem a bit simple and straightforward, compared to the complex doorstopper epics of today, but it's an entertaining read that doesn't have a single soft spot or slow moment in the narrative.
http://beauty-in-ruins.blogspot.com/2018/06/fantasy-review-towers-of-sunset-by-l-e.html
Unusual and unorthodox, especially with the following book, The Magic Engineer, jumping forward again to a point between the two books, but that non-linear storytelling is part of the series' charm.
The Towers of the Sunset is part coming-of-age story and part quest tale, overlaid with a heavy dose of world-building. I'll get to the first two items in a moment, but I want to talk a bit about the world-building first. There are political, religious, and cultural elements introduced here that are absolutely fascinating. Where other authors would have settled for a typical matriarchy, Modesitt crafts a gender-flipped society where roles are reversed because of a mysterious mythology known as "The Legend" that adds a layer of intrigue to Creslin's story.
The other aspect of world-building that really excited me about this book in particular is the deeper exploration of the magic system, based not on good versus evil, but on chaos versus order. It's a fascinating system, well-defined, and based as much on science and philosophy as anything mystical. It's also the first fantasy novel I can remember that really wowed me with the use of magic. This is big-time magic, with large-scale spells that not only have impact, but consequences. The weather magic in particular is amazing, especially when Creslin has no clear concept of what he's doing or how, but it's even more interesting after the mechanics are explained.
Getting back to the story, the plotting of Creslin's coming-of-age is a little thin, and it jumps around a bit more than I would have liked, but it certainly has its moments. The mountainside escape from his mother's guards is great, and his magical enslavement on the Wizard's road breathes some new excitement into the tired old trope of lost memories. It's once he and Megaera finally come together, sharing a violent, tension-filled sea voyage to Recluce, that the story really takes off, and the way they begin building a new society is far more interesting than you might expect.
Along the way, Modesitt explores some complex questions of power, morality, gender politics, and family drama. Some of those concepts seem a little dated on a reread but, looking back over a quarter century, it reminds me of how daring and innovative they were for the time. The Towers of the Sunset may seem a bit simple and straightforward, compared to the complex doorstopper epics of today, but it's an entertaining read that doesn't have a single soft spot or slow moment in the narrative.
http://beauty-in-ruins.blogspot.com/2018/06/fantasy-review-towers-of-sunset-by-l-e.html
kenlaan's review against another edition
3.0
3 stars for an interesting setting and magic system, characters that started interesting but wore a little thin, and an ending that kinda fizzled. But there was enough here such that I want to read the next soon.
The Saga of Recluce is Good, Actually?
L.E. Modesitt Jr. seems to be underappreciated compared to other fantasy authors of his time (90s-present), if the number of Goodreads reviews and talk of his books is anything to go on. And I find myself guilty of that, too, with this being only the second book I've read by him. Very recently I've been on a kick of reading a lot of fantasy, most of it from the 80s/90s, and it got me considering checking back in with the Recluce series.
I read the first of this series, [b: The Magic of Reluce] in the 90s - probably alongside Wheel of Time, Sword of Truth, and R.A. Salvatore's Drizzt books, etc. I certainly didn't like it at first. Lerris, the protagonist, was insufferable at the beginning, as his character's primary motivation was that he was bored working as an apprentice to his uncle, a carpenter. He was insufferable to the extent that his family kicked him off the island of Recluce, Survivor-style. (I'm taking some liberties here). He marginally improves after being kicked off the island as he finds work helping a failing carpenter, and we're treated to several scenes of woodworking, selling breadbaskets, bargaining for scrap wood, negotiating wages, etc. It's all very compelling typical fantasy stuff. And yet, somehow, I kept reading and by the end I found myself thoroughly enjoying it.
Lerris gets somewhat more tolerable. And it wasn't so much that he was voted off the island, but that his inability to fit in with Recluce's mores lead to him being sent on a sort of fantasy Rumspringa, which I thought was a cool concept. There's also a pretty nifty Order & Chaos based magic system that stays internally consistent without being explained to within an inch of its life, Sanderson-style (though it does, due to the color associations - Order = Black, White = Chaos - lead to some questionable phraseology, like "the Blacks" and "White power"
The Saga of Recluce is Good, Actually?
L.E. Modesitt Jr. seems to be underappreciated compared to other fantasy authors of his time (90s-present), if the number of Goodreads reviews and talk of his books is anything to go on. And I find myself guilty of that, too, with this being only the second book I've read by him. Very recently I've been on a kick of reading a lot of fantasy, most of it from the 80s/90s, and it got me considering checking back in with the Recluce series.
I read the first of this series, [b: The Magic of Reluce] in the 90s - probably alongside Wheel of Time, Sword of Truth, and R.A. Salvatore's Drizzt books, etc. I certainly didn't like it at first. Lerris, the protagonist, was insufferable at the beginning, as his character's primary motivation was that he was bored working as an apprentice to his uncle, a carpenter. He was insufferable to the extent that his family kicked him off the island of Recluce, Survivor-style. (I'm taking some liberties here). He marginally improves after being kicked off the island as he finds work helping a failing carpenter, and we're treated to several scenes of woodworking, selling breadbaskets, bargaining for scrap wood, negotiating wages, etc. It's all very compelling typical fantasy stuff. And yet, somehow, I kept reading and by the end I found myself thoroughly enjoying it.
Lerris gets somewhat more tolerable. And it wasn't so much that he was voted off the island, but that his inability to fit in with Recluce's mores lead to him being sent on a sort of fantasy Rumspringa, which I thought was a cool concept. There's also a pretty nifty Order & Chaos based magic system that stays internally consistent without being explained to within an inch of its life, Sanderson-style (though it does, due to the color associations - Order = Black, White = Chaos - lead to some questionable phraseology, like "the Blacks" and "White power"
mikehex's review against another edition
3.0
A big step up from the first Recluce book. I got this one in the Tor.com free book program and, if any Tor people are reading this, it worked, I'll be continuing through the series, at least for a few more books.
Modesitt's writing style take a bit to get used to, between the sparse descriptions, the sound effects and the distance he keeps from the characters. But he does let the reader develop an emotional attachment to the 2 main characters in this novel that I thought was missing from the first. We'll see if that continues.
I'm a sucker for world-building, so I'm hoping Modesitt keeps me interested in the individual stories/characters as he lays out this world.
Modesitt's writing style take a bit to get used to, between the sparse descriptions, the sound effects and the distance he keeps from the characters. But he does let the reader develop an emotional attachment to the 2 main characters in this novel that I thought was missing from the first. We'll see if that continues.
I'm a sucker for world-building, so I'm hoping Modesitt keeps me interested in the individual stories/characters as he lays out this world.
ryodragon20's review against another edition
adventurous
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0