The deadly White Wizards of Fairhaven, wielding the forces of chaos, have completed their great highway through the Westhorns and now threatened the ancient matriarchy of Sarronnyn, the last bastion of order in Candar. The ruler of Sarronnyn appeals to the Black order wizards of Recluce for help.
Justen – a young Black Engineer in the city of Nylan – joins the relief force. Despite their success in destroying more than half the White armies, Sarronnyn falls to the White Wizards, and Justen is chased into the most inhospitable desert in Candar. These trials are but the beginning, for the White Wizards have all Candar in their grasp. Justen must fight both Recluce and Fairhaven, as well as the highest powers of order and the forbidden technology to harness chaos itself in his efforts to halt the conquest of the chaos wizards.
This is the 4th novel in the Recluce-series. I have read the first three about two years ago, so I was a bit struggling in the beginning. I recognised names and places, however, I couldn’t place them at the start. Every book is basically a stand alone in a large complex frame, jumping through time. This book, for example, takes place after the third book, but before the first one, and has Justen as main character, who was a side-character in the first book. L.E. Modesitt jr always said to read his books in publication-order instead of time-order, so I will stick to that.
The book is divided in three parts and the amazing number of 157 chapters (some of them less than a page long). The first part (around 250 pages or so), tells the background of Justen, living on Recluce as a Black Engineer. When the White Chaos mages are advancing to Sarronnyn, in order to take command of the place, the black order mages sends some volunteers to help the people of Sarronnyn against the Whites, who have been their enemies for ages. However, the Blacks have become complacent, living safe on Recluce, building their warships and thus letting the whites conquering Candar. The council doesn’t really care what happens in Candar. Justen is as a blacksmith one of the volunteers to go to Sarronnyn. His brother, the mighty Wind Mage Gunner, is coming with him. Between the two of them they destroy a large part of the White armies, but that is not enough. Their own army scattered, Justen finds himself on the run into the desert of the Stone Hills. There he meets the Angels and druids. While recuperating from the ordeals in Candar, Justen learns that both Order and Chaos have become too immense and that he might be the only one who can stop both.
I tried, I really tried. I knew from previous books that Modesitt has a certain style of writing, but I thought I could handle it because this story was about Justen, a character I really was curious about. But it didn’t work for me. There are several main flaws with the book. The characters left me indifferent, even Justen. The Whites are inter-changeable and all characters were flat. There is hardly any emotion and I never connected with any of the characters. At a lot of moments you read how hard it is for Justen to do what must be done, how terrible he feels about his destructive powers and how he misses his girlfriend. But as a reader I never felt it. It was standing on a page, but it didn’t connect with me. Same is for the evil, mean and bad White Wizard. He was there, but didn’t impress me. At all.
Another problem is the writing style. I know, I have read his three previous books so I should’ve known. But apparently I forgot. I really got annoyed by the fact that the writer tries to write down noise. I mean: he describes the surrounding noise. But instead of that being an integrated part of the story it distracted me. All the “wheeee” and “thunkkkkk’s” and “hhssttt’s” were getting on my nerves. Sometimes it felt like reading about an asthmatic horse. So, that also didn’t work for me at all. And I think that was a contributor to the last problem: the tension. There wasn’t any. Great forces, evil powers, corrupt councilmembers and so forth. They were totally boring. Unbelievable.
In the end I had to struggle to finish it. I did finish it, but it was hard.
Published by Orbit | 1996 | ISBN: 1-85723-377-8 | 581 pages | 4th novel in the Saga of Recluce| Official author website | Rating 1 out of 5.
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