The Recluce Reread: The Order War

Welcome back dear readers to the fourth installment of the Recluce Reread! Today we’re going to discuss The Order War, in which we learn a lot more about the nature of order and chaos, have more political Recluce drama, and end with a world changing finale - though if we’re being fair, a number of these early books have world changing finales.

If you’re keeping up with the series chronology, and I certainly wouldn’t blame anyone for just going with the flow, The Order War is set 400 years or so after the previous book, The Magic Engineer, which means it is around 700 years after the founding of Recluce in The Towers of the Sunset. The Order War is still some 200 years before we meet Lerris in The Magic of Recluce, though if you’ve read *that* book you’ll note very quickly that this is the same Justen that Lerris meets and Gunnar is Lerris’s father.

Modesitt changes up the Recluce formula a bit in The Order War. This time our protagonist Justen is not exiled from the island of Recluce (or functionally driven from Westwind as Creslin was) but as a magic engineer joins a small military detachment traveling to Sarronnyn to help defend it against the White Wizards of Fairhaven. Oh, those chaos mages. They just want to take over the whole world and there’s always some order mage getting in their way. 

To simplify a good amount of plot, In the battles against the Fairhaven wizards and troops, Justen is separated from the rest of the Recluce and while hunted by the white wizards eventually travels a decent way across Candar to the forest of Naclos (after being rescued by a druid who has been talking to him in his dreams)

In various novels we’ve encountered mentions of the druids, Naclos, the Great Forest, The Accursed Forest - but here we are introduced to the actual community that lives in the forest and in balance (always the balance) with nature and order and chaos. I may have to push the re-read farther than I was planning to see how deep into the Naclos lore we actually get. 

When we first met Justen in The Magic of Recluce we meet him as a Grey Wizard, one who embodies (sort of) both Order and Chaos. The rest of our protagonists and heroes have been fairly pure black (order) mages thus far - but what the novels have been hinting at to various degrees is that excessive order concentrated in one place or machines will only breed more chaos across the world, which is how the white wizards of Fairhaven have grown so powerful even as Recluce itself has become a world power. 

To the druids that accumulation of excessive order and chaos in the world is, well, unbalanced for how the world should be and is a harbinger of great conflicts to come. In Justen they see a potential druid who is at the cusp of understanding his own balance but who can also be a tool for stepping back into the world to “do something” about Fairhaven and respect the balance at the same time. Recluce has since learned that building a stronger fleet of order based ships or doing mighty deeds with massive amounts of order magic may achieve their short term strategic aim but will long term increase concentrations of chaos across Candar. Also - I kind of wonder how the island nations of Hamor and Nordla feel about all of that. Like, they are just minding their business and all of sudden, bam, there’s more powerful magicians in their land?

The thrust of all of this is a big climactic battle and mighty deeds and Justen (and his brother Gunnar, a weather mage like Creslin, along with a guard from Recluce) takes his newly built “land engine” and floats a giant magnifying glass in the sky and melts Fairhaven like an ant. It’s much more traumatic than that, both in the experience of it as well as the Frvn we first discovered in The Magic of Recluce.

The Order War is a significantly more satisfying book than The Magic Engineer was and Justen is a more enjoyable (less dangergeld whiny) protagonist to follow than Dorrin could ever hope to be, though there is still a pattern of not explaining things in this book as has been in the previous three. I suspect it’s because there is a greater maturity to Justen and he generally accepts Recluce and Order as they are, though we are not without conflicts with Recluce as the three person ruling council includes an incredibly corrupt trader and two other councilors who seem to not want to go against said councilor. It’s never smooth sailing. Conflict from within. Conflict from without. 

There is an ancient druid in Naclos. I don’t know when we learn who she is, but internet sleuthing tells me that she is Ayrlyn, one of the original “angels” who ended up in this world in the events we read about in The Fall of Angels and The Chaos Balance - which is approximately 1200 years in the past, if we’re wondering how long lived some of those druids can be. We also revisit Werlynn, a singer and druid, who mentions his long dead children, which we know are Creslin and Llyse from Westwind (if you remember The Towers of the Sunset).

Well - that’s it for The Order War. When we meet again we’ll talk about The Death of Chaos, in which everything ends even though Modesitt will write 20 more Recluce novels, but none set after that book.


Related Short Story: The Price of Perfect Order. 

Set 8 years after The Order War, the story doesn’t so much deal with the fallout of the climactic melting of Fairhaven and reduction of chaos and order as show some consequence of what it means to be truly ordered and how Recluce deals with those who don’t live up to that ideal.

What is interesting and not successful reading this right after The Order War is there is a trader named Ryltar, which unless I am getting twisted up character names, which is the same name as one of the antagonists of The Order War and in the same profession but is a 20ish year old trader who still seems wrong. Maybe I have the name wrong, but I read this right after finishing the novel and that aspect read incredibly discordant.

This is also probably my least favorite of the short stories I’ve read while pushing along the re-read.

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PUBLISHED BY: Joe Sherry - Senior Editor of Nerds of a Feather. Hugo and Ignyte Winner. Minnesotan.

Nanoreviews: Butterfly Effects, Sub-Majer's Challenge

 

Butterfly Effects, by Seanan McGuire

At this point it is pretty well established that I’m all in on Seanan McGuire’s various novels and series and I’ve been a fan of Incryptid from the start, which is something I bring up because McGuire has been cooking with Antimony truly saving the world, Alice getting Thomas back, and on the various journeys across worlds / dimensions with Sarah Zellaby - but this third Sarah novel just didn’t quite land for me. 

This is to say that even when I’m not fully invested in one of McGuire’s books I’m still having a good time and she’s a smooth writer with a distinct style, and all of the verbal tics she uses in how any of the characters express themselves is on full display - so if you’re down with how Seanan McGuire writes you’ll be on board with Butterfly Effects. 

Where I faltered is in this continued telling of Sarah’s story. This will make absolutely no sense for anyone who isn’t already familiar with Incryptid, but Sarah Zellaby is basically a telepathic wasp in human form. Her species is known as a cuckoo, or more properly a Johrlac. While many magical / mystical creatures are native to Earth, the Johrlac are from the planet Johrlar, which is somewhere out there, it’s not important, but the cuckoos can be incredibly destructive to a planet - but it turns out that the cuckoos of Earth are not “true” Johrlac, they are outcasts and the Johrlac have been shutting down and eliminating any that become too powerful or commit “crimes”.

Well, in a previous novel Sarah did reach the ultimate power level of a Johrlac and in doing so (and in saving the world) ending up committing a murder (per the Johrlac) so the true Johrlac came to earth and kidnapped / arrested Sarah back to their planet to put her on a sham trial and execute her. 

That’s a lot of background to describe what’s going on here, but the end result was a rescue adventure of a motley bunch of Prices (including Alice, Thomas, Antimony, and others) that *should* have been a heck of a romp but somehow isn’t as remotely satisfying as I had hoped. Butterfly Effects is weirdly tedious while mixed with that style of Seanan McGuire’s which I otherwise appreciate and enjoy.

I’ll be looking for the next Incryptid novel and wondering where McGuire brings the story (presumably back to the issues with the Covenant), but for me, Butterfly Effects is one of the weaker entries in the series. 

Sub-Majer’s Challenge, by L.E. Modesitt, Jr

This is a somewhat mis-titled book because it’s not very long into the story when Alyiakal is promoted to Majer, which isn’t so much of an important point as it is something that bothered me for much of Sub-Majer’s Challenge. It is also happily the only thing that bothered me about Sub-Majer’s Challenge - which is probably not a surprise to anyone who has paid attention to my reviews of Modesitt’s Recluce novels. I’ve often described Modesitt’s fiction as comfort food, and that’s an image I keep returning to because it just feels so right - there is something about these books that give me exactly what I am looking for - which is, ultimately a world to luxuriate and live in through the gradual trials of its protagonists.

Sub-Majer’s Challenge is the 26th book in the Saga of Recluce and the third of the Alyiakal sub series. With his promotion to Majer, Alyiakal is assigned back to Pemedra, this time as post Commander. Pemedra is another combat posting. It is mentioned multiple times in the Alyiakal books that the most competent officers who are perhaps also too rigidly moral spend their careers in combat postings because either they accomplish the empire’s aims or they are killed. Neither result is preferable to the other. Obviously Alyiakal thrives and succeeds.

That’s what we get in Sub-Majer’s Challenge - another combat posting, rising through the ranks, and succeeding in the most impossible ways that he simply cannot be denied. Through it all, we follow Alyiakal through his day to day life, the challenges of ethical leadership, his relationship with the trader Saelora, and eventually his further rise and promotion to an entirely new sphere of political influence and the risks inherent.

While readers can start almost anywhere in the Recluce saga, the third in a character arc is perhaps not the best spot. The Alyiakal novels are quite good, so begin with From the Forest and continue through there. The last novel in the arc, Last of the First, will publish this summer.


PUBLISHED BY: Joe Sherry - Senior Editor of Nerds of a Feather. Hugo and Ignyte Winner. Minnesotan.

The Recluce Reread: The Magic Engineer

Welcome dear readers to the third installment of the Recluce Reread! Today we’re going to talk about The Magic Engineer, which is the book that sort of answers the question you probably were not asking when reading The Magic of Recluce and wondering “where does Recluce get those wonderful toys?”. It starts here, some 300 years after Creslin and Megeara founded Recluce in The Towers of the Sunset. 

Chronology only matters to a point in the Recluce series and that point is just how much the reader cares how everything fits together. I *mostly* care how everything fits, by which I mean I like to see the connections between novels but because Modesitt jumps around so much in time through the 25 (so far) published novels that those connections are often little more than threads.

For example, The Magic Engineer is set 300 years after The Towers of the Sunset and the founding of Recluce. Creslin has already passed into legend and is spoken about in magely circles but also in the sense of “Recluce doesn’t have a Creslin” and there are thin hints about descendents. The Magic Engineer is also a good 1500 years after the Alyiakal novels, which are thus far the earliest set and still 650 years before The Magic of Recluce and the final books of the setting.

The novel begins very similarly to The Magic of Recluce. Dorrin is not Lerris facing the dangergeld (terrible name, by the way), but he’s not not Lerris facing the dangergeld. Those who can’t accept Recluce’s rules in their core will face exile, but those whose parents can afford to pay for Academy schooling, they can be trained to have a greater opportunity for success. That’s Dorrin, a young blacksmith who doesn’t quite fit in, doesn’t accept the answers that he is given, and really all he wants to do is just make his machines that he is insistent are order based but the magisters of Recluce say otherwise. So away he goes. 

I’ll confirm as I re-read more of the series, but this is likely to be my least favorite Recluce novel. It’s not that I dislike Dorrin, he’s a fairly standard Recluce hero, but I much less enjoy reading about Dorrin than I do most other protagonists. I liked it him far less early on than I did Lerris, impressive as that is, and only really settle in to Dorrin’s story once *he* is settled into Diev and doing the mundane work of smithing and trying to a) figure out how to make his giant engines and b) how to earn enough gold to be able to do so. As far as that goes, it’s a fairly standard Recluce story: Try to live a peaceful life, forced by circumstances to live in interesting times, feel forced to act, explosive conclusion. Rinse, wash, repeat.

I do find it interesting that Dorrin is the one who wrote The Basis of Order, the small tome (presumably small) that underpins so much of subsequent order teaching - though it only appears in a few books. Maybe it’s because it’s so prominent in The Magic of Recluce and I only read that a couple months ago so it feels fresh, important and ever present.

Otherwise, we get the founding of Nylan the city and more importantly (maybe), the origin of the black warships used in The Magic of Recluce and what seemed in that novel to be the true foundation of the power of the island nation.

But what I’d really like to read and am almost certainly not going to get is something set in and around Recluce in the 200+ years between The Towers of the Sunset and The Magic Engineer to see how Recluce developed after Creslin and Megaera passed away. I know not every period has the bits of explosiveness that Modesitt likes to build towards - but given that he tells stories that lives in the mundanity of the day to day, I’d like to read that story.


Related Short Story: Artisan: Four Portraits and a Miniature

This story runs concurrently with The Magic Engineer and is a series of glimpses into the life of another the not-a-dangergelders who started with Dorrin, Jyll, a painter. It starts with her inability to accept the Recluce life (from the perspective of the magisters, of course), her semi magical violence, and her gradual maturation through the episodes of the story until it intersects back with Dorrin at the end of the novel. 

I wouldn’t say so much that it fills in gaps as much as it just shows that other lives are continuing and weaving in and out of the narrative viewpoint that we are given in The Magic Engineer. It’s not one of my favorites from Recluce Tales


PUBLISHED BY: Joe Sherry - Senior Editor of Nerds of a Feather. Hugo and Ignyte Winner. Minnesotan.

The Recluce Reread: The Towers of the Sunset

 

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.

The Recluce Reread: The Magic of Recluce

Dear readers, if you thought to yourself that you don't have enough rereads of fantasy series in your life, have I got a treat for you! By treat, of course, I have the pleasure to announce that I'm launching a reread of L.E. Modesitt, Jr's Recluce Saga. The series spans 26 novels and a story collection, and I'll be upfront that a full series reread would require far more ambition than I have in me.

The plan is to for sure push through the first six books of Recluce, with a probable endpoint of The Fall of Angels and a potential to go one more with The Chaos Balance since it is linked to The Fall of Angels. That will almost certainly be it.

If you asked me on the right day, I would tell you that I have many favorite series, because there's so much great stuff out there and I've been reading science fiction and fantasy since the early nineties, and this is a genre built on series. This one is among my favorites, so let's just get right to it.

The Magic of Recluce and the fifth book in the series, The Death of Chaos, are chronologically the last books of the series. I recently (at the time of writing this) finished Sub-Majer’s Challenge, the twenty-fifth Recluce novel and part of a sub-series of the earliest books in the chronology—to the point that The Magic of Recluce is set some 2100 years after what Modesitt is writing now.

I first discovered Recluce sometime in the mid ’90s, but it wasn’t this book that hooked me. I’ll write about this more when I write about the next book, but I discovered the series with The Towers of the Sunset and was swept away and blown away by the story of Creslin leaving Westwind in the snow and everything that followed. That was my introduction to this world, but The Magic of Recluce (originally published in 1991) is the book that actually started it all.

Here’s the introduction: Lerris is a young man on the island of Recluce who seemingly doesn’t know or care much about anything. As a result, because the society on the island is built around a concept of Order as a fundamental force (might as well use capital letters here), anyone who cannot fully commit to Order and who in turn may inadvertently invite Chaos into that society is exiled from the island and sent out into the rest of the world to find their way and ultimately figure out if they can truly belong as part of Recluce. Few return.

A motley group of disaffected not quite youth must undertake a “dangergeld”—a.k.a. the semiformal exile quest with a purpose. Each of the seven have their own reasons (or causes) for not fitting into Recluce society, but since the novel is mostly told from a pretty tight first-person perspective of Lerris, we only get his perspective on the others.

Lerris is, according to the internet, only 15 when we first meet him, which does explain why he is an absolutely annoying git for almost half the book. Lerris is someone who wants to understand, but he wants to be told why in a way that he can understand and without being lectured, which is perfectly reasonable, and it doesn’t appear that Recluce has a modern education system, so he never quite internalizes an understanding of the fundamental nature of Recluce. Since we see everything through the eyes of Lerris, neither do we.

It’s not a bad setup for a novel: boy who doesn’t know shit about shit is exiled until he can figure his shit out, and in the meantime we (the reader) learn how the world and its inherent magic system of Order and Chaos overall works. Things eventually go boom.

I’ll admit that I never loved The Magic of Recluce as much as most of the rest of the series. It’s Lerris, and also because I fell for Creslin and Westwind, and then went back to this first book, and Lerris isn’t Creslin (though I’m prepared to be disappointed by Creslin after all these years). The good news is that even if, on reread, it’s still not going to ever be one of my favorites in the series, it’s a reasonably good introduction that sets up a truly climactic fifth novel that doesn’t actually end the series, because there’s still twenty novels after that, which take place at various points in the overall chronology.

The Magic of Recluce sets the template for just about every novel in the series that follows: regardless of the age of the protagonist, there is a need to develop an understanding of either order or chaos and its underlying principles and to deeply internalize it as they go through the day-to-day mundanity of their lives, and often they will be sent away from their home and end up in conflict with other powers that be, as they are or become deeply competent and moral, and it’s that competence and morality that forms the core conflict. If that works for a reader, it’ll really work.

As someone this deep into the series, the parts of The Magic of Recluce that I most appreciated are when he settled down in a town for about a year and just worked as a woodworker/crafter, and avoided romantic entanglements with the daughter of the crafter who took him in, because he knows he’ll still need to venture out eventually and do magic, all the while gaining the respect of those around him for his young age and skill. We get versions of this in almost every Recluce novel, whether it is competence at a trade or as a military professional, and I am an absolute sucker for it.

I don’t remember how I reacted to the novel when I first read it and what bits I latched onto. It might have been some of the same lore that I’m digging today, but today it’s nostalgia. It’s the melted city of Frvn that used to be Fairhaven that was once the greatest city and power center of the white wizards. There were pictures in the city of Nylan in Recluce of two “magisters” from long ago. Those were Creslin and Megaera from Towers of the Sunset. Nylan itself, the black city, was kind of a counterpoint to Fairhaven, but also was named after another legendary figure. Justen will feature in a couple of books coming up. I don’t even know where to begin with the fairly minor character of Cassius. There’s overall less lore that pulls across the span of novels, but the bits that are here are all stuff that I just really enjoy.

That’s where I land on The Magic of Recluce and Modesitt’s fantasy novels: it’s just compelling stuff that I’ve been reading for thirty years now, and while I’ve kept up on the franchise, I don’t think I’ve revisited anything in possibly twenty years now. I’m going to enjoy this ride.

Related Short Story: “Black Ordermage”

Before Lerris leaves for his dangergeld, he is trained by a number of magisters. One of them is a man named Cassius, a black mage who we are given hints that he might not be from the world of Recluce. I don't mean from the island, I mean literally not from the same world. There are suggestions that he might be from our (the reader's) world.

“Black Ordermage” is the origin of Cassius arriving in the Recluce universe. Like those angels and demons of legend, he is not from that world. He is a Vietnam-era American sailor fighting a fire on the flight deck of his ship and is… somehow… transported to the middle of a battle on a Recluce ship, which ends with him in captivity, accepting that he really isn't in his world anymore, and a gradual understanding that he might be an order mage and what that means.

The story is set around 20 years prior to the start of The Magic of Recluce. It doesn't add all that much to the lore or understanding of the world or even this novel. What it really does is confirm a small bit of speculation that yep, Cassius is from Earth, just like later novels will feature characters also not native to this world.

One thing that I do find interesting is that the various transports to this universe are not all pulled from the same time. Cassius is from the 1970s, but others had more large-scale military spacecraft. I'm curious once again at the mechanism for how some of these transfers occured. 

PUBLISHED BY: Joe Sherry - Senior Editor of Nerds of a Feather. Hugo and Ignyte Winner. Minnesotan.

Nanoreviews: Demon Daughter. Installment Immortality, Overcaptain

Demon Daughter, by Lois McMaster Bujold

A very gentle story, one of my favorites of the series. In Demon Daughter a young girl, Atta, is washed ashore following a shipwreck and for reasons ends up in the care of Penric, who (if you haven’t been keeping up with this series) is basically a semi itinerant priest who deals with cases of demon possession.

Demon Daughter ends up a combination of a small domestic drama and a question of the nature of demon possession in this universe and it is small and it is quiet, but it is deeply powerful. Atta is possessed by a very young demon and that allows for the perspective of Desdemona to come very much to the forefront of this novella.

This is the twelfth novella in the Penric and Desdemona series and for a reader who has been along for the ride since the first volume, Demon Daughter is deeply satisfying.

Installment Immortality, by Seanan McGuire

I have to wonder how close we are getting to an end point with the Incryptid series. That’s not a statement of exhaustion, but an observation of the stories McGuire is telling at this point. Spoilers will likely abound - but the previous book, Aftermarket Afterlife, had the Covenant (if you know you know) launching major attacks against the Price-Healy family and our heroes hitting back with a counter attack utilizing the ghostly skills of Mary Dunlavy to hit the Covenant at their main chapterhouse. Installment Immortality sort of deals with the consequence of that, in that it is focused on what happens to a ghost who blows everything up and can’t quite get away from the bomb and also gives an update on the state of the Covenant following that attack.

On the assumption Seanan McGuire isn’t just getting starting fifteen books into the series, It seems like we’re getting close to a potential end game for Incryptid (this is also notable after reading the description for next year’s book Butterfly Effects).

That’s neither here nor there when thinking about Installment Immortality, but the future of the series was weighing on my mind when reading it.

What Installment Immortality does well is tell what is functionally a side story from the main Price family action. Still a ghost getting to do ghost things Mary Dunlavy is put on a quest to put a stop to Covenant agents attacking the ghosts of America - and through this examines the consequences of several books ago regarding cousin Arthur (again, this will make sense if you know the series - I don’t know that I’d recommend jumping in here even though it’s a new narrator and those are typically jump in spots).

As a general rule I love this series. Seanan McGuire has done a fantastic job making Incryptid feel very lived in. We’ve been on a *journey* with this family and everything is familiar even with McGuire is doing new things, shifting perspectives, and making things generally uncomfortable for her characters. It’s impossible to read Installment Immortality in a vacuum. It’s the fifteenth book in a series that I’ve been reading for many years after diving headfirst into Discount Armageddon.

If Installment Immortality isn’t one of my favorite books of the series, and it’s not, it is still an overall satisfying read but I think primarily for those who have been along for the ride and it doesn’t hit some of the highs of earlier books in the series.

Overcaptain, by L.E. Modesitt, Jr

Alyiakal returns in Overcaptain, the latest entry in L.E. Modesitt’s long running Saga of Recluce. Following the events of From the Forest, success comes with a price and Alyiakal has been promoted, assigned to close a military post that has been a hot mess, and further assigned to be deputy Commander to an officer who doesn’t want the help.

There’s a trend in the Recluce series of extremely competent men who don’t fit the perfect political mold of those in power but who do their jobs so well their advancement cannot be denied but are given continually impossible tasks that are designed to either fail or kill them (or both). If you’re down for that, along with the understanding that Recluce novels live in the mundanity of their protagonists day to day lives that hint and build towards a much greater conflict.

Modesitt’s prose is smooth and Overcaptain is languorous easy reading. I continually describe Recluce as comfort reading, which isn’t to say that the action itself is comfort but Overcaptain (and the rest of the series) is a book to sink in and just live in this world for as long as it takes to make it to the end. The journey is the point of Recluce, much less so than the destination - but the destination always includes some fireworks.

Overcaptain is another solid entry in the Saga of Recluce.


PUBLISHED BY: Joe Sherry - Senior Editor of Nerds of a Feather. Hugo and Ignyte Winner. Minnesotan.

Nanoreviews (Modesitt Edition): From the Forest, Contrarian

From the Forest, by L.E. Modesitt, Jr

From the Forest introduces another chapter in Modessit’s Recluce Saga and is the twenty third novel in the sequence and the first in a four volume sequence focusing on Alyiakal, a young officer in the Cyadoran military. Long time readers of the series may recognize that name from the Magi’i of Cyador but new readers can rest assured that no prior series knowledge is necessary. From the Forest is the earliest set Recluce novel and is some 300ish years before any of the other books. 

Alyiakal’s story should be familiar to Modesitt readers: A young man doesn’t quite fit into a clear path into his life, ends up in the military, is extraordinarily competent and deeply moral within the structures of his society, faces challenges to his life, and if he lives will be on a path towards greatness. If he lives is frequently mentioned because that competence and morality is also viewed as a threat to those in power - so somehow hiding his power is critical while still striving towards that excellence because there is no other option. Also, Alyiakal is a secret magic user and needs to keep that power secret from the Magi’i because he doesn’t fit neatly into one of Cyador’s boxes / proscribed path for a (somewhat) upper caste person. That’s an entirely different conversation. 

A Modesitt novel, and From the Forest in particular, lives in the details. It’s how Alyiakal goes about his life, learns his business in the military, keeps secret a very cautious romance, and is thrown into increasingly challenging military campaigns. Modesitt is a slooooow burn of ordinary life and explosions of action. 

Modesitt knows *his* business and is incredibly skilled at telling this sort of story and telling it the way he does. To a small point, a Recluce novel is a Recluce novel (is an Imager novel is a Corean Chronicle novel is a Grand Illusion novel) and all of the story beats readers may expect to be hit will be hit. Each novel isn’t the same thing, but it’s not not the same thing either. 

It’s a good time and pure comfort food. Bring on the next.

 

Contrarian, by L.E. Modesitt Jr

After completing his Imager Portfolio series and in between volumes of The Saga of Recluce, Modesitt wrote “The Grand Illusion” trilogy - which though it can’t feel like anything else than a Modesitt fantasy novel he’s doing something a little bit different with this trilogy (Isolate, Councilor) that is focused on the inner workings of politics. 

Steffan Dekkard is now somewhat more established as a Councilor (read: Senator) though still in his first term and dealing with the fallout of the last attack on the council building which killed his mentor (and Premier / Prime Minister) and a (seemingly) slow desperate investigation of the politically violent movement behind it and threatening future action and violence if their demands aren’t met. 

I’m both curious about Modesitt’s personal politics and at the same time I don’t really want to know how much he is exploring ideas here compared to what he truly believes - but because of the particular demands of the Meritorists (the organized opposition group singing the song of angry men) and how Dekkard righteously states why most of their demands are a terrible idea - the one in particular that keeps coming up is the idea of public votes from councilors, with Dekkard’s criticism that if the populace knew which councilor voted which way then those councilors would be subject to significant financial and social pressure to fall in line rather than potentially voting for things they truly believe in. It is a bit of a criticism of the political system of the United States and, at least on a surface level, seems accurate if simplistic but the system in Dekkard’s world is equally full of party politics so there may not be a significant difference. It’s just more of a secret with the party politics, but maybe not that much more of a secret compared to contemporary American politics. 

All of that musing is pertinent because that is the novel Contrarian is - a book where Dekkard manages to start a new political movement in a moment where readers everywhere say “oh, that’s why the title is what it is”, which I suppose is a spoiler but I’m not convinced is as much as it might come across. It’s a truly minor plot point that might be larger in the director’s cut. Along with the daily life details that Modesitt revels in, a significant portion of Contrarian exists within the details of this world’s political process - which all slow burns to a climactic bit of explosive action. 

Unlike most Modesitt novels, prior knowledge of Isolate and Councilor are very much needed. Contrarian is a mostly successful conclusion to The Grand Illusion, though is a bit of a middling Modesitt novel.

Joe Sherry - Senior Editor of Nerds of a Feather, Hugo and Ignyte Award Winner. Minnesotan. 

Nanoreviews: Councilor, Starter Villain

Councilor, by L.E. Modesitt, Jr

Because I’m a sucker for L.E. Modesitt, Jr’s fantasy novels and I am all in on how he writes a slow burn narrative that is as much focused on the day to day mundanity of life as it is on the exciting large set piece action sequences, Councilor scratches the exact itch that I have for this sort of fantasy.

Councilor is the second novel in L.E. Modesitt, Jr’s Grand Illusion sequence, following 2021’s Isolate. It is set in a somewhat more technologically advanced fantasy world with coal power and cars (but not electricity) and that is set even deeper in the middle of a fairly democratic political structure.

Most of Modesitt’s fantasy work involves political and philosophical discourse wrapped around the day to day as tension and potential large scale conflict builds from small incidents. Councilor takes that to the next level by living in the political. Now elected to the council which he once defended as a security aide, Steffan Dekkard is settling into this new role with the seriousness he undertook his previous.

Starter Villain, by John Scalzi

There has been a trend in science fiction and fantasy for a number of years now for very cozy stories, which I’m not sure is fully defined but which would reasonably include writers like Becky Chambers, Travis Baldree, TJ Klune. At a minimum, what I’m thinking about is genre fiction with a lighter touch and eschews a harsher darkness in the storytelling but also in tone. There is a separate conversation to be had regarding the definition of cozy science fiction and exactly what qualifies. This isn’t that space, but I mention it because it is something that was on my mind while reading Starter Villain.

John Scalzi has always had a light touch with his science fiction, and Starter Villain is no different. Starter Villain is a very Scalzi novel, meaning that the narrative zips along with snappy dialogue and even though there are potentially life threatening stakes they don’t feel quite as heavy as they might in other hands.

Starter Villain posits that after his estranged uncle dies, Charlie finds himself their heir to immense wealth and a super-villain’s business empire (including a secret lair inside a volcano) - with no idea of anything about this world even existing Charlie is brought in almost against his wishes and finds himself in a world of comic absurdity.

That’s where Scalzi’s light touch works through this every day guy thrust into a world of wealth and power and the thing is, Charlie does it with decency. That’s where I thought about the potential coziness of Starter Villain and how it just felt kind despite billionaires plotting to murder Charlie and take over the world. It’s the feel of the thing.

The core thing to note about Starter Villain though, is that it is just a straight up funny novel. Starter Villain was an absolute delight and a real riot. My wife and I would both snort and laugh out loud and share our favorite lines, which is more than we can say about many other novels - and that’s worth celebrating and sharing.


Joe Sherry - Co-editor of Nerds of a Feather, Hugo Award Winner. Ignyte Award Finalist. Minnesotan. He / Him

Nanoreviews: The Physicians of Vilnoc, Isolate, The Immortal Conquistador

Bujold, Lois McMaster. The Physicians of Vilnoc [Subterranean]
This is the plague novella that was supposed to come out before The Orphans of Raspay (the pirate novella) but was delayed because of, well, the real world pandemic. I'm pretty sure I have that right. Regardless, one Learned Penric is happy and content with his life when his brother-in-law asks for Penric's help as a physician. Apparently there is a touch of plague at the military fort and perhaps Penric (and his demon Desdemona) can help.

The question, of course, isn't whether Penric will stop the plague it's how Penric will stop the plague. Which is good, it's always nice when someone is able to stop a potential pandemic. It's interesting reading Physicians of Vilnoc during an actual pandemic where we're not sure how far things will go - though reading Vilnoc in 2021 might have been a different experience than if I read it earlier in 2020.

Listen, this is the eighth published Penric and Desdemona novella. You can mostly jump in wherever and Bujold gives enough context to figure it all out but the richer context is from having read more of the series of very linked stand alone novellas. Lois McMaster Bujold doesn't miss and she doesn't miss here. Physicians of Vilnoc is excellent
Score: 8/10

Modesitt Jr, L.E. Isolate [Tor]
Isolate is a fantasy novel from L.E. Modesitt, Jr. That sentence is doing a lot of work and it is important because if you've read any of Modesitt's fantasy novels you have a pretty good sense of the shape and style of Isolate. If you've read more than one of his fantasy novels, you have a really good idea what sort of novel this is.

Isolate is set in a somewhat more modern setting - there are cars (though steam powered) and buses and the primary city of the novel just feels more modern than anything we've seen in Recluce or Imager or the Corean Chronicles. Steffan Dekkard is somewhat older and more accomplished, which is something I appreciate when Modesitt writes full adults rather than the youth who needs everything explained - though Dekkard is a political neophyte and as the security for a councilor, he is getting new political lessons as he is going to be coming up in that world. It's not that much different than any of the Recluce protagonists reading The Basis of Order and working on theory. Here it's a lot of political conversations, local politics as well as some that touch a wider nation. If you like all of that, if you like the slow burn and the day to day interactions and meals (and meals) and theory and even some political campaigning and that does build to a larger conflict that is oh so slowly being revealed - Isolate is for you. It's the first novel in a new series that is completely unrelated to any of Modesitt's other works. L.E. Modesitt, Jr writes a L.E. Modesitt, Jr novel and for me, that's exactly what I'm looking for.
Score: 7/10

Vaughn, Carrie. The Immortal Conquistador [Tachyon]
Rick has never been my favorite character in the Kitty Norville series. Long time readers know Rick as the vampire Master of Denver and eventual friend / ally of Kitty. I never thought much about it in these terms when reading the series as it was published, but I was very much Team Werewolf. The vampires were either antagonists or a nuisance in some fashion, not counting the ultimate evil of Dux Bellorum. But likewise, I also never wondered about Rick, and how he got that way. If Rick and his vampire hijinks are your thing, this is the collection for you!

With that said, The Immortal Conquistador is a short story collection (with a linking interstitial storyline) written by Carrie Vaughn and she's a fantastic writer. Though Rick isn't necessarily my favorite, the collected origin stories of Ricardo de Avila are as delightful and charming as I've come to expect from Vaughn. These are smoothly told and, frankly, the idea of Rick befriending and briefly adventuring with Doc Holliday works far better than it has any right to and I wouldn't wanted to have missed it. Come for a vampire who wants nothing more than to never meet another vampire, stay for "Dead Men in Central City"
Score: 8/10

Joe Sherry - Co-editor of Nerds of a Feather, 5x Hugo Award Finalist for Best Fanzine. Minnesotan. He / Him

Microreview [book]: Empress of Eternity by L.E. Modesitt Jr

An ambitious deep time story of three far future Earth civilizations revolving around an enigmatic and seemingly imperishable wonder of the world.

The Canal.

We here in our present don’t know, can’t even imagine it, but in our future, the thousands of miles long continent-spanning canal edifice makes the Suez and Panama canals seem small and underwhelming. The canal has existed for countless millennia, and seems impervious to damage to just about everything subjected to it short of a nuclear blast. There are two control stations (or are they actually for that?  it’s hard for these societies to tell). One is closed, and the other is open...to empty rooms.

The mystery of the canal ties into the fate of three civilizations and the people who inhabit them, all themselves separated widely by countless millenia. But the fate of the bridge, and the fate the civilizations, and perhaps more, is the matter of LE Modesitt Jr’s Empress of Eternity.

Deep time is something that Modesitt has come back to in his science fiction time and again, but in a way very different than, say, Gregory Benford or Greg Egan. L.E. Modesitt’s The Eternity Artifact is the model here for what he does in Empress of Eternity, a slow and stately, sometimes a bit too slow for its own good. It’s a novel for slow and patient reading rather than flying through the book at breakneck pace to see what’s going on.

The format of the book leans into this. Taking place at several widely spaced points even further in the future than the construction of the bridge, which is a mystery to these descendant civilizations of humankind, Modesitt takes his time in the novel to set up the main characters in each time period, the cultures, societies and ultimately the conflicts that resonate across all three of them.

In the earliest narrative, the Unity of Caelaarn, we are introduced to Lord Maertyn and his wife. This is a society with an aristocratic bent to the sociology, Maertyn is a minor lord, but it gives him enough power and clout to be a minor minister in a government department, and gives him enough clout for him and his wife Maarlyna to investigate the Canal. Maertyn’s story goes to the SF political thrillers that Modesitt used to write much more frequently, as his recall to the capital throws him into intrigue and danger. Aside from the unusual biological oriented tech, though, and those are often quite understated, this is the narrative that is most like our modern day in its trappings. 

The next narrative, chronologically takes place in the culture of the Ruche. The Ruche technocracy has a more engineering and physics based material science than Caelaarn, which makes some of what they do a little more understandable than the “biologic is best” science approach of the Unity. On the other hand, Modesitt loving to show his cleverness for such reversals, it is made clear that the Rusch or their founding population suffered from a genetic bottleneck, and the elfin features among the members of the Rusch means there is not a lot of variation. This is carried into the seeking of the unity of thought as well as form in this civilization. The civilization is under threat from something that readers today can appreciate--global warming. Desertification of the planet is a real and challenging problem, and putting the society under strain.

The Vanir Hegemony and the Aesyr Rebels make up the third and most distant of the civilizations where we get a point of view (we get a name check of a couple of others but they are not relevant to the narrative of the book) . Here, Helkyria runs a research project at the Canal dealing with the prospect of a new Snowball (Iceberg) Earth and hopes that something, anything in the canal might be able to slow or arrest the march of the Ice. Enter the Aesyr Rebels, who have a fatalistic and catastrophic answer to this global problem.  This far future society is even more interesting, biologically than the Rusch in that there is much more and rather interestingly distinct sexual dimorphism between men and women in this time period.

Thus we have three cultures separated by at least hundreds of thousands of years, if not millions, all trying to make sense of a seemingly timeless artifact with not a lot of features to actually explore. At first there is a real sense of wheel spinning on the part of all three civilizations, since the canal and its environs are just literally a big dumb object, even if it is an object that seems impervious to everything including the ravages of time and space. The descendant civilizations from its builders have very little real idea how the canal was built and even less understanding as to why and what it is for. This gives the narrative and the reader a lot of time to get set up with the societies and their underlying problems, as well as the triple set of characters. The Canal does give up its secrets, but slowly.

One of the pleasures of reading a Modesitt book is working things out. Modesitt is a writer who likes to have his readers engage and figure things out on the page. This, by the way, sometimes makes his audiobooks a little more of a reach than physical books, because sometimes you will want to stop reading and puzzle out a problem or a question raised in the narrative. One spoiler I will give early and often because it helps lean into the mystery is that there is no moon and instead there is a ring in the sky. Yes, this takes place on Earth, and yes what happened to the moon and why becomes plot relevant. Are there links to any other Modesitt books? Modesitt does have a penchant for putting one or two easter eggs that suggests a particular book is linked to another, and sometimes rather surprisingly connections (the origin of his Recluce novels is from one of his science fiction verses, strangely enough). Here, the easter egg is in a future novel--having read it last year, I now see that Quantum Shadows (reviewed here at NOAF by Joe: http://www.nerds-feather.com/2021/06/nanoreviews-factory-witches-of-lowell.html) takes place in the same future verse as this novel does. 

Modesitt loves to explore themes, too, and in addition to all of the worldbuilding, is the themes of the book. “History does not repeat but it rhymes” is the prevailing theme of the crisis points that the three civilizations face, and Modesitt is not shy in drawing parallels between the three, both for the reader, and eventually for the characters as well. The history in question is a matter of autonomy, freedom, and resisting authoritarianism. All three cultures, Caelaarn, The Ruche, and the Aesir/Vanir are cultures where authoritarianism is rearing its ugly head in ways that resonate across time. All three crisis points are unique and the individual problems are different, and yet not so different after all. How does one resist authoritarianism? What is justified in that resistance? How does it distort individuals, societies, civilizations? In the midst of a novel full of techno-jargon (three sets) and a Big Dumb Object, Modesitt does spend a lot of time and energy on these problems. AS mentioned above, since for a good chunk of the book, the canal itself is an impenetrable enigma, the narrative weight goes elsewhere. It is in the latter portion of the book that we get more of the technological speculation, and revelations of what the canal is for, how and why it is built, and, just what the book title actually means.

There are the usual touches one finds in a Modesitt book, too. In some ways, there is a lot of mannerism in his books, his interests always come to the fore. Sometimes, as in this novel, it can be a bit shoehorned in.  Food, for example, and the well detailed description of meals and what they are composed of is a major feature of his work. Even though all of his characters wind up under possible privation within the control structure of the canal, there are still opportunities in the narrative for Modesitt to elaborately and mouth wateringly describe meals that the characters eat. This is particularly true of Lord Maretyn, who spends much of his time in the capital but all three of the timelines talk about food and what they are eating. Readers used to old school SF where food was ignored should look no farther than Modesitt for their fix of lavishly detailed meals. Modesitt also does like his travelogues, often under threat or trouble, which is a hard thing to do where a lot of the action is very constricted to a series of rooms in a mysterious building at the edge of the canal. Lord Maretyn, again, comes through here, with his flight from the capital an ornate cat and mouse spy vs spy set piece that is really well done and had me envisioning and thinking of movies like Charade and The Third Man.

I am still looking for a better SF L E Modesitt Jr book to introduce readers to the SF side of his writing. I still think, even given its age, the aforementioned The Eternity Artifact is the most successful of his SF books for new readers. This is a solid and deep SF novel for fans of the author’s work, but readers new to him and his work, particularly the SF side, Empress of Eternity is not likely the Modesitt book you are looking for to give it a try.  It’s too slow and mannered, and too easy for readers unfamiliar with his work to bounce off of it on a number of grounds. It makes it ultimately impossible to really recommend this book to many new readers, which ultimately, given the author’s skills and oeuvre, is a shame. 

---

The Math

Baseline Score: 6/10

Bonuses: +1 for interesting technological and sociological and even biological speculations.

+1 for strong use of themes that resonate across the three time periods.

Penalties: -2 for being a little too glacial and sedate for readers unused to Modesitt's style

Nerd Coefficient: 6/10

Reference: Modesitt Jr, L.E. The Empress of Eternity (2010, TOR)

 POSTED BY: Paul Weimer. Ubiquitous in Shadow, but I’m just this guy, you know? @princejvstin.

Nanoreviews: The Factory Witches of Lowell, Quantum Shadows, Rhythm of War

Malerich, C.S. The Factory Witches of Lowell [Tordotcom Publishing]

It's somewhat not fair to read The Factory Witches of Lowell less than two months after finishing The Once and Future Witches. They're not the same story, except they both involve historical witchcraft and fighting for one's rights. There is enough similarity that taking The Factory Witches of Lowell on its own merits is functionally impossible because it comes across as part of a genre conversation and reexamination of witchcraft. The problem, such as it is, is that this novella has more to live up to and it doesn't get all the way there.

All of which to say that The Factory Witches of Lowell is a story about women, witchcraft, and labor unions. The magic is a means to an end, a means to claim power in the face of injustice. The story is smoothly and easily told - the novella is a quick read with real heart. There's plenty to appreciate here.
Score: 6/10

Modesitt, Jr, L.E. Quantum Shadows [Tor]

I've written a number of capsule reviews of L.E. Modesitt, Jr's fantasy novels, primarily in the Recluce and Imager settings. I frequently note how reading Modesitt is pure comfort and that while I generally know almost exactly what I'm going to get, it is that perfectly set expectation meeting execution that brings me coming back again and again for more. By now I've read thirty of his fantasy novels, but none of his science fiction work. Having read his fantasy across three series, I was confident I knew what I was getting into and was prepared for the science fiction version of his fantasy work. Readers, for perhaps the first time in thirty novels, my expectations were not met.

Quantum Shadows read like an unpolished draft of one of Modesitt's fantasy novels, though within a science fiction setting. I could not have been more disappointed. Perhaps it was that my expectations were misaligned with the story Modesitt intended to tell, but I simply bounced hard off of Quantum Shadows. Perhaps readers more familiar with his science fiction would find something to love here, but the writing was far more awkward and stiff than Modesitt tends to deliver with his fantasy. Quantum Shadows doesn't stand up to Modesitt's fantasy and it certainly doesn't stand up to the best of science fiction being written today.
Score: 4/10

Sanderson, Brandon. Rhythm of War [Tor]

If Rhythm of War isn't the longest novel I've read, topping in at over 1200 pages it is certainly one of the longest. Talking about page count when it comes to epic fantasy is a bit passe at this point given that the genre is sometimes affectionately known as "big fat fantasy". Not since his earliest novels (Elantris and Mistborn) has Sanderson been sparing with his word count, but Rhythm of War takes it to another level.

To a point, Brandon Sanderson has earned that trust and he doesn't abuse it - though I'm not sure if readers would have really noticed the difference had he turned in a 950 page novel instead.

Listen - Rhythm of War is the fourth novel in Sanderson's Stormlight Archive (a proposed ten volume series made up of two 5 book story arcs) and under no circumstances can it be said to stand alone. So, if you're even considering reading this book you've read the approximately 3000 combined pages of The Way of Kings, Words of Radiance, and Oathbringer. You already know if you want to read this book. At most you want to know if it pays off the big ideas of the series and it absolutely does.

Much of the novel is the small steps towards (and during) the wider conflict the series has been building towards. It's not exactly "more of the same", but it is gradual narrative progression (or it feels like). Where Rhythm of War truly shines, though, is those moments where Sanderson gives something new and something big. We've known for years that all of his epic fantasy is part of a wider universe (truly) called the Cosmere and there have been easter eggs planted throughout all of his novels where they connect even though it doesn't matter to the individual novel. You still don't need to know anything about the Cosmere or the other novels (besides this series) - but Rhythm of War is the novel that actually introduces the concept of the Cosmere. There's been talk about traveling from other worlds but every time it is pushed to the forefront it becomes something cooler an something substantial in the series. Beyond that, there are a handful of other significant events that rise above the ordinary conflict of the novel and series that make the whole thing just a bit more interesting than it might have been.

As noted, this is for fans of Brandon Sanderson and specifically for readers of The Stormlight Archive. Rhythm of War is not the entry point, but it is a satisfying (if overly long) ride.
Score: 7/10

Joe Sherry - Co-editor of Nerds of a Feather, 5x Hugo Award Finalist for Best Fanzine. Minnesotan. He / Him

Nanoreviews: A Desolation Called Peace, Fairhaven Rising, We Are Satellites

Martine, Arkady. A Desolation Called Peace [Tor]

Adri has already written about A Desolation Called Peace at greater length and with greater insight, but this is a novel which deserves additional attention because, frankly, it lives up to all of the hype and anticipation following Arkady Martine's stellar and Hugo Award winning debut, A Memory Called Empire.

This is a first contact novel, though in a wildly explosive manner. Like A Memory Called Empire, politics are at the forefront. Watching Nine Hibiscus navigate military politics is a treat, but my favorite bits of the novel are following Eight Antidote, the eleven year old and "90% clone" of the former emperor as he gains experience and involves himself into politics while still trying to learn and grow. It is utterly charming and precocious and uncanny and every moment of Eight Antidote's page time is perfect. As is so much of this novel. Anyone who loved the first novel will love A Desolation Called Peace. The Teixcalaan empire is larger in this novel, the scope of their reach is expansive and the empire is no longer just one capital city / planet. This is such a cool novel. A Desolation Called Peace is can't miss science fiction.
Score: 9/10

Modesitt, Jr, L.E. Fairhaven Rising [Tor]

It seems weird to root for the success of Fairhaven. In some ways, the white mages of Fairhaven have long been the Big Bad of the Recluce series. Not exclusively, of course - but for novels set on the continent of Candar, more often that not and especially very early in the series where Modesitt was setting how the world works - Fairhaven had the aura of opposition. Sometime in the previous novel, The Mage-Fire War I realized that the town of Haven that Beltur and company were set to restore and defend might actually become Fairhaven and that this was not the origin story I might have expected.

Fairhaven Rising is set sixteen years later, focused on Taelya, a white mage and road guard / trooper for Fairhaven. As is customary for one of Modesitt's novels, people who just want to live at peace and do things their own way are never left alone and that is the case with Fairhaven as they are pressed into a war they want no part of but are not strong enough yet to prevent. 

Fairhaven Rising hits all of the familiar beats of a Modesitt novel, from the gradual build of a less tested mage into a mighty warrior to the quiet moments of cooking and learning magery to escalating battle. There are long moments of travel and "nothing" occuring - but it is those quiet moments of seeming nothing where the novel lives and shines (though the battles aren't to be sniffed at). It has been absolutely delightful to, indeed, see the rise of Fairhaven and while Modesitt has spent more time in this particular era than any other in the series, I do hope to see at least one more novel with Taelya leading Fairhaven farther into the future.
Score: 7/10

Pinsker, Sarah. We Are Satellites [Berkley]

After two novels and slew of stories, Sarah Pinsker has proven herself to be one of the preeminent science fiction writers working today. No matter the story, Pinsker tells it with thoughtful intelligence and grace. We Are Satellites is Pinsker's second novel and it lives up to her legacy of excellence.

We Are Satellites looks at the near future of technology, with an implant designed to improve the focus and an ability to functionally multitask. It's such a boon to those who receive the implant, truly transformative except, no technology is perfect and there are always those left behind. Sarah Pinsker examines the social and personal consequences of such a transformative technology and how that technology is used by governments and countries. The scale of We Are Satellites is tight and personal to one particular family - and all of those dynamics are explored, but that family is used to widen the scope for so many permutations for how that technology can work and go wrong. 

We Are Satellites is really good, y'all.
Score: 8/10


POSTED BY: Joe Sherry - Co-editor of Nerds of a Feather, 4x Hugo Award Finalist for Best Fanzine. Minnesotan. He / Him.

Nanoreviews: In the Shadows of Men, Goldilocks, Endgames

Bennett, Robert Jackson. In the Shadows of Men [Subterranean]

I wish I was more familiar with Bennett's earliest work (Mr. Shivers, American Elsewhere, The Company Man) because I don't quite know if In the Shadows of Men is more of a return to Bennett's origins or a stretching in bold new directions. Readers who primarily know Robert Jackson Bennett from his Divine Cities trilogy will be in quite a surprise for realistically bleak this novella is.

Set in our world, in the wreckage of the modern oil boom, In the Shadows of Men is story of brothers and a past almost better left buried. This isn't a novella to read before bed because the combination of how Bennett hints at the supernatural and reveals an absolutely horrific family history is, well, not to overuse the word brutal, but brutal.

If it matters, it is never quite clear if this is fully in genre or if it is straddling a line in ways that some of Stephen King's work does - and the comparison to King is particularly apt.
Score: 8/10

Lam, Laura. Goldilocks [Orbit]

It's interesting and always fun when you go into a novel knowing not much more than "space" and "that's a nice cover" only to find that it exceeded your most optimistic hopes. Folks, Goldilocks is fantastic! If you like rogue missions to colonize another planet, long space journeys, dying Earth stories, feminist dystopias, and just more space - you're likely to love Goldilocks as much as I did.

The publisher describes Goldilocks as a "bold and thought provoking new thriller for readers of The Martian and The Handmaid's Tale" and while the Andy Weir comparison seems more to say "spaaaaaace" and not much more, it is really the feminist dystopia that is the underpinning of Goldilocks, of the rights and expectations gradually stripped away day by day. Margaret Atwood is the big budget comparison, but Goldilocks hits the power and fear of more modern dystopias such as Red Clocks and Before She Sleeps (among many others). We can see how close we are to the edge, how few nudges it would take for the United States to start stripping rights away - and that's what Laura Lam is working around, why it was important for those women to steal the spaceship.

Goldilocks flips between the voyage and various events back before the launch. It's absolutely engrossing and I highly recommend Goldilocks.
Score: 8/10

Modesitt, Jr, L.E. Endgames [Tor]

While I would not normally recommend starting a series at Book 9 (Madness in Solidar) and then continuing on without ever going back to the first eight, Modesitt has a trend in his long running series to write particular story arcs set at different times in a world's history - so Madness in Solidar through Endgames has formed an extended story arc set fairly well in the middle of the overall Imager chronology. I just don't know what references from the earlier and later set novels these books are expanding on, what little miscellany might be given richer detail.

After plots and shenanigans, the new ruler of Solidar is a young man who hadn't expected to ascend to the position for many years, but assassination waits for no man. The core of Endgames is Charyn, the new Rex of Solidar, working desperately to do his best for Solidar and quell the simmering anger between workers and manufacturing owners - and in the process, save his own life. If that sounds overly political and down in the weeds, well, Endgames is not the place to begin reading Modesitt's Imager novels. There are numerous starting points (Imager, Scholar, Madness in Solidar, heck - even Assassin's Price), but this is not one. Endgames is the conclusion of both a four book arc as well as a slightly tighter two novel arc focused on Charyn.

Readers familiar with Modesitt's slow build know what to expect here. Endgames lives on characterization and gradual reveals, on the reader willing to dive deeply into the politics of not only a city, but into the ethics of choice and of action, on a good man trying to do the right thing in the face of increasingly impossible odds that might cost his life but is worth doing all the same because there really is no choice. Endgames is pure Modesitt, and that is a delight indeed.
Score: 7/10


POSTED BY: Joe Sherry - Co-editor of Nerds of a Feather, 4x Hugo Award Finalist for Best Fanzine. Minnesotan. He / Him.