When I wrote about The Magic of Recluce I mentioned The Towers of the Sunset was my entry point into Recluce and was the novel that hooked me enough to begin a now thirty year fandom for the series and of L.E. Modesitt, Jr’s various fantasy series (Recluce obviously being the most prominent). All these years later I can still feel Creslin skiing off into the snow just as clearly as I can with June Morrissey walking off into the snow in Louise Erdrich’s Love Medicine, which is a foundational literary moment fundamentally burned into my memory.
All of that is why I was concerned when I started re-reading The Towers of the Sunset and didn’t immediately feel whatever I felt decades ago - which I realize is impossible because I was a teenager thirty some years ago and now I’m pushing 50 and have two kids, one of which is only two years away from becoming a teenager himself. I have changed immensely, the book remains a moment in time.
When the novel starts Creslin is a young man being pushed into an arranged political marriage. He is the son of the Marshall of Westwind, the military outpost that is its own community and under its own rule. Westwind follow The Legend, which is to say that there were once angels and demons and it was men’s hubris that led to the fall of the angels and as such, only women should have true power and rule.
Creslin is resentful about all of that. Not the legend so much as that he knows what his fate is and he wants no part of it. Because the Marshall allowed him to train with the famed Westwind guards who are truly the best of the best, Creslin is a far more accomplished warrior than he understands and has skills to slip away in the aforementioned snowstorm in order to find a different path for his life than that arranged marriage and subservience.
That path involves a whole lot of pain and a surprising amount of wizards trying to kill him because of where he comes from and what he represents to them - which is some sort of perceived threat to the existence of the White Wizards of Fairhaven. Creslin, of course, is an untrained black wizard. It is noted later in the novel that if the council at Fairhaven just allowed for Creslin to be trained by their black wizards all of what happened later could have been avoided because Creslin was only in opposition to them because he was fighting for his life.
Instead what the white wizards of Fairhaven get is the founding of Recluce as its own entity to stand on its own for Creslin and Maegaera (more on her in a moment) to have a place of their own. Creslin, it turns out, was an untrained black mage and possibly an even stronger storm mage. Magaera was a powerful white wizard who is bound to pain to her sister but who will eventually become an equally powerful black mage. They are bound together, not by choice, but in their desire / need / drive to find a place where they can just exist.
The two of them are the arranged marriage I’ve mentioned a few times. Megaera is the sister of the Tyrant of Sarronnyn and their marriage was to solidify an alliance, but the path to that connection is perhaps harder than anything the white wizards could throw at them, which includes Creslin having his mind wiped and being made a slave doing heavy labor.
Until Creslin and Megaera are finally brought together and even for a bit after that, the magical connection of the not-a-relationship is probably the most frustrating part of the novel because they are magically connected to the point that Megaera can feel everything that happens to Creslin, resents his existence, somehow comes to him in what feels like a dream and even though it’s real he has no reason to think it’s anything other than a dream and through Creslin’s actions Megaera resents him even more for being an animal or a brute - and then when they get together for their survival she makes clear how much disdain she has for him because the two of them are collectively bad at communicating or coming to an understanding. All the while they are fighting for survival against the white wizards and not really coming together.
It’s not a great time and remains not a great time until they begin to come to an understanding much later in the novel when we get closer to their escape to and founding of Recluce. Everything comes together then and the novel really starts to build to a more satisfying resolution. It’s just a little frustrating until we get there because a core part of the novel is the two protagonists sort of being dicks to each other because they are hurting and don’t understand the other is also hurting.
Thinking back to how The Towers of the Sunset was one of the most foundational fantasy novels for the younger me, even through nostalgia, it doesn’t hit remotely the same as it did thirty years ago. I suppose it never could have.
I’m not disappointed, exactly, but I do acknowledge that even as the series has remained a constant over those three decades that not all of the moments that were so meaningful once will be as they were.
What does hit just as hard as it did the first time I read it was the fall of Westwind, which still feels so intensely powerful even though it was only introduced in this book and was a relatively small part of the story. Westwind looms large, possibly because of how it was targeted and also because Recluce is, in some ways, built upon the bones of Westwind.
Another thing that I really appreciate in this book, but also across the full series is the little bits of lore that are doled out. There are legends of the angels and demons, of Ryba, mentions of Nylan (which we know as a city in The Magic of Recluce), and just little bits that I just enjoy.
I’m also pretty sure the idea of the Balance was discussed in The Magic of Recluce, but it is more called out here.
“Klerris thinks that Creslin is a creation of the balance, that too much chaos necessitates a greater focus on order. Theoretically the opposite would be possible, of course. If, for example, Recluce became a home to order, too much emphasis on order could create an imbalance and empower of a few great Chaos Wizards.” She shakes her head. “That’s just speculation. We really don’t know”
Between this book and then The Magic Engineer, it seems pretty clear that is an accurate guess of how the world works.
Related Short Story: Songs Past, Songs for Those to Come
The stories collected in Recluce Tales fill in gaps or provide a bit of added color to the universe. “Songs Past, Songs for Those to Come” is one of the stories that (sort of) answer questions raised in the books. In this case, about the silver haired singer who came to Westwind and fathered Creslin before disappearing, as well as a suggestion that he was sent by the White Wizards to do so?
He’s not named in the story, but the singer here is Werlynn - he’s a druid (we don’t really know much about that yet) from the Great Forest, the absentee father of Creslin, and sort of a legendary figure who has dreams and visions of all sorts of events that he needs to nudge the world into bringing to occur - so where he is said to have been sent by the whites to go make a baby and reduce the amount of order in that part of the world it’s really his idea, or the idea of his dreams.
“Song Past, Songs for Those to Come” is a glimpse into the person who really set everything in motion for the eventual founding of Recluce and destruction of Fairhaven (all things in his visions) - so one can reasonably say that all of this is his fault, but the presumption is also that by acting Werlynn is preventing a greater imbalance of order and chaos. As I said, it’s a fill in the gap story without being truly satisfying.
Related Short Story: Sisters of Sarronnyn, Sisters of Westwind
I had read this story at least once before, likely more, but it hit like I remember The Towers of the Sunset hitting. “Sisters of Sarronyn, Sisters of Westwind” is told from the perspective of Shierra, a guard captain at Westwind. The story mirrors that of The Towers of the Sunset, starting just before Creslin skis off into a snowstorm and ends reasonably close to when the novel does. It just jumps in time for how the events impact Shierra, how she ends up volunteering to be the first Westwind guard contingent to travel to Recluce to help Creslin, her relationship with the male guard commander there, her relationship with Megaera, her perspective on her broken relationship with Fiera (the Westwind guard that Creslin kisses early in the novel who brings the last remnant of Westwind to Recluce late in the book).
Somehow the jumping in time to follow where the events of the book more directly intersect with Westwind and Shierra, the story is far more effective than “Songs Past, Songs for Those to Come” or even “Black Ordermage”. In the novel Shierra is just the guard who trains Megaera and builds the Recluce guards into a stronger force. Here there is real heart.
PUBLISHED BY: Joe Sherry - Senior Editor of Nerds of a Feather. Hugo and Ignyte Winner. Minnesotan.
