A young man from meager beginnings comes into a power that sets him apart from his peers; and throughout the novel, the young man matures and learns more about himself. Sounds simple enough, right? Many novels, fantasy novels in particular, have worked within that simple framework. In The Magic of Recluce by L.E. Modesitt, Jr., that framework holds together an entertaining novel that managed to grow on me more with each page I read.
Lerris is a bored young man, he tells us this with regularity through the first person narration Modesitt employs for a great majority of the novel. People like Lerris who don’t fit within the Brotherhood’s strictly governed land of Recluce, are given two choices – partake in the dangergeld, a journey people of this world go through in order to find their purpose or be exiled. Lerris’ parents send him to apprentice under his woodworker Uncle, which they think will give him the discipline he requires when he partakes in the ritualistic dangergeld. While he becomes good at woodworking, he of course becomes bored with it, despite the familial ties. When he readies to leave, his uncle Sardit gifts him an incredibly beautiful wrought staff of black wood, bound at the ends in metal.
The black staff enhances Lerris’s proclivity with magic, which makes people look at and interact with him quite differently – something with a mix of fear and trepidation. This unease is initially felt when Lerris arrives at the school where he’s to hone his skills. His class includes a handful of students at a similar crossroads, the two with whom he most closely associates is the angry red-head Tamra, and the reserved Krystal. His skill comes to the fore in combat/physical training, he has great affinity for working with Order magic. Order is one of two forces which define and can be manipulated in this world, Chaos being the other. Lerris and his fellow students soon reach a point in their training where they must truly begin their dangergeld, they are told to leave their training facility alone, without any of their fellow students.
The young man, once a woodworker, begins his journey and soon falls into the company of a Grey Wizard. The Grey Wizard helps Lerris focus his powers over Order and enlightens the young man about the dangers of Chaos, particularly Chaos unchecked. They visit a region devastated by Chaos magic before moving on and separating. Lerris once again takes up work as an assistant woodworker. Chaos comes calling and Lerris realizes his presence is putting people in danger so he makes a bold attempt to confront Chaos, in the form of the White Wizard Antonin.
Modesitt has been writing for more than thirty years and at the time The Magic of Recluce was published, he’d been writing and publishing science fiction for nearly twenty years; it was his first fantasy novel. While the framework of The Magic of Recluce is classic in nature, he brings in enough of a unique take to make the novel an extremely enjoyable read. Initially, Lerris was not the most…pleasant of characters. His continual boredom and interactions with other characters made him come across as somewhat caustic. Not exactly the preferred qualities of a protagonist, especially when that protagonist is telling the story as the first person narrator. What made Lerris’s journey believable was Modesitt’s ability to not just make the hero bearable in the fantastical situation, but to slowly turn him into an admirable mature man.
While the final confrontation plays something like the hero against the Dark Lord, it is clear that Antonin the Chaos Wizard is not the ultimate evil in the world. In addition to bearing the white colors of Chaos, he’s noted to be the latest practitioner of Chaos magic to wield it in an unsavory fashion. There were powerful Chaos Wizards in the past who needed to be thwarted and there will be more in the future. In Modesitt’s world of Recluce, Chaos and Order continually struggle for balance.
Lerris’s journey throughout the novel felt believable, but there was a distance between him as the character and me as the reader. He put up invisible walls between himself and the other characters in the book, as if speaking through a screen door and not letting anybody into his personal space. What makes this odd for me is that the novel (aside from a few random chapters focusing on Antonin’s activity) are told entirely from Lerris’ point of view as narrator.
The version of the book I read was the 20th anniversary edition, published in 2011 with new artwork by Matt Stawicki. The cover of original version was by Darrell K. Sweet, I would venture to guess, to evoke a similar feel in readers as a certain large fantasy novel published the year before The Magic of Recluce – The Eye of the World. While Modesitt hasn’t reached as many readers as has Jordan, the fact that this edition I read is a special 20th Anniversary Edition indicates the novel and series have found a large audience/fans/readership.
I’ve read a lot of Epic Fantasy novel and this one worked very well for me; enough that I’ll be continuing my reader’s journey through The Saga of Recluce.
Recommended.
© 2013 Rob H. Bedford
Tor / Trade Paperback Edition June 2011
(Originally published 1991)
Hardcover ISBN 978-0-765-33112-0 454 Pages
Excerpt on Tor.com: http://www.tor.com/stories/2011/06/the-magic-of-recluce-excerpt
http://www.lemodesittjr.com
Review copy courtesy of the publisher, Tor
Re-read it recently. Your review is spot on.