My sister told me if I was looking for a Codex Alera fix, I'd find it with this. 'It's even better than Alera,' she said.I'm amazed I finally finished it - it's one of those books that even after you've been reading it for days, you don't seem to have got any further.The first 3/4 of the book are very slow. It took me over a hundred pages to get into it, and work out the world (i.e. 'Hieron, Madrien': all it needed was the smallest throwaway sentence to say it was the capital city of Madrien, the land ruled by the Matrial. REALLY), and I put down the book many, many times for other books just because it was sorely testing my patience. I wasn't fully convinced by the romance between Alucius and Wendra, which got in the way of sympathising with them, although the dissonance lessened towards the end of the book.When books exceed a certain length, do editors and proofreaders stop reading them? It seemed to me this book would have benefited from a forthright editor. All over the book, chunks of several paragraphs could have been reduced to a few more effective sentences; there were many instances when sentences just didn't make sense, even though I read and re-read them. The pace was too slow, held up by excessive text, and there was too little explanation about a lot of things, although it's possible that is being saved for later books. Poor editing really detracted from this book.That said: I really got into once I figured out everything that was going on. Lots of military stuff again (how did this happen to me? I even read Sharpe's Rifles by Bernard Cornwell XD) - Alucius does remind me a little of Tavi (Codex Alera by Jim Butcher), and my sister told me - when I told her it was hard to get into - to imagine that Alucius has a 'rich inner world'. I admit that helped XD
I'm embarrassed to say, I did enjoy reading this book, in the same way I enjoy sitting on the couch and eating ice cream while watching a crap television show. I hadn't let myself get lost in a poorly constructed, formulaic fantasy story in a while, and it was due. However:-An alternate title for this book might've been "Gender Wars: Payback Time, Bitches." For all his hedging with the (eminently male) main character considering all sides of the central conflict, this was still a book about women capturing and pacifying men, and how innately evil a feminist society would be. Not that Madrien is an accurate representation of a feminist society, but rather a kind of anti-feminist nightmare society where men are shackled like animals. Not cool, Mr. Modesitt.-The characters had no depth, at all, whatsoever. There was the magic guy who just wants to live the simple life, and the one-dimensional girl who pines for him. There's the gruff old man, and the nameless soldiers, and the evil queen, and blah blah blah characters ad infinitum with nothing going on below the surface.-The plot has a similar problem to most fantasy genre fiction. It goes something like folksycharm-folksycharm-war-war-war-war-war-war-war-war-magic-folksycharm-end.-The dialogue at the conclusion was *painful.* I mean dialogue wasn't the strong suit here in general, but once there was no more conflict to be had, there was just no blood flowing to it anymore.If you want a piece of fluff that you don't have to think about (assuming you can ignore the rampant genderfail), involving some magic, some fighting, and a bland, emotionless badass, then this book might be for you.
Do You like book Legacies (2003)?
Slow start, fantastic ending!Bottom Line: Try before you buyHaving never read any Modesitt before, I had no idea what I was in store for, and was pleasantly surprised, despite the very slow start to get to the real action of the story.Once the action started, the story really moves along..which is when the main character joins with the army, after having spent the summer being trained (beaten daily) by his grandfather. The main character, is yet another in a series of characters from all kinds of authors, that if done correctly make great heroes...despite their never changing reluctance to being chosen or tasked for the job (or just being in the wrong place at the right time).There's a little bit of a love story, which is nice, and a lot about families sticking together. A little bit of magic too weaved into the story.Overall, nicely done, not the strongest story I've ever read, but really nice all the same...and the ending definitely had me wanting to pick up the rest of the series.
—Chris
This one sort of "snuck up on me". I've liked most of the books I've read by L E Modesitt Jr. Years ago I read many of the Recluse series. After that I found the Soprano Sorceress series. The latest books I read by him were the Imager books. All good. Now I've had this one on my to be read shelf for some time...finally got to it.We open with book with a lady seeing a Soarer...of course we don't know what that is. We do get a description and we're beginning to put things together by the book's end as to what's going on there. But we have a way to go there.Soon our hero is born, after his father is dead. That happens a lot on fantasy novels. So, we begin to learn a little about the world where the story takes place. There's history here and as we progress, geopolitics...magic geopolitics. There are elements of other fantasy worlds here and ideas we've seen before but as I've noted often after a few thousand years of oral and written stories I doubt there is a completely unique storyline out there. Mostly it depends on how the ideas, the plot-points, the characters are used.Here they are used well.But...for a while when I started the book, I found it a bit slow. I'd lay the book aside and not get back to it. At first it didn't stay with me, I wasn't dying to get back to it. But at some point it did draw me in and I burned through it.I like it, I can recommend it and I've already bought the next.Enjoy.
—Mike (the Paladin)
Alucius lives in the land of Corus which used to be ruled by a great civilization until some sort of cataclysm occurred. Now the continent is divided into several countries that are on the verge of war. Alucius, who we see grow from a young boy to a young man, just wants to get married to a nice girl and live as a peaceful herder on his family’s stead. But war comes and Alucius is drafted into the army where he rises rapidly in the ranks.As a herder, Alucius has inherited the “Talent” which allows him to sense the presence of others and underlies some of his uncanny battle skills. But he must hide the Talent and try to make his successes seem natural because most people who aren’t herders either fear or would like to exploit him. This becomes especially true when he gets captured by the army of the Matrial, an evil woman who rules over an empire that enslaves men. Alucius knows he must escape ... Read More: http://www.fantasyliterature.com/revi...
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