Magic Engineer by L.E. Modesitt Jr.

The Magic Engineer is quite a protracted book. It seems very interminable throughout and the action only happens in quite short bursts, which I think is not particularly gripping.
The beginning and the end are the best bits, and most of the words aren't needed, but it provides important information to the develoment of the charcters.
Unfortunately I didn't like this book, I had to drag my way through it but it is well written.

Well, I stumbled upon the Magic Engineer when my sister-in-law told me about it. I thought it sounded interesting, and when I read the first few sections, I started to have a connection with the main character, Dorrin.

Modesitt must have done quite a bit of research to detail everything as well as he did. It took me an hour to orient myself to his system of measurement and seasons and such, but once I got passed that and was used to it all, I was completely emmeresed, I felt as though I was right along side Dorrin as he worked the bellows... etc...

Needless to say I was impressed how the character grew and matured, and he did what he knew he should, despite wether he wanted to or not....

All in all, I was impressed.

Since the first book, Modesitt's writing has been getting better and better. By that, I mean his characters are being developed better and his storytelling was improving. The confusion I felt reading the first book has slowly decreased throughout the series. This book was on the verge of earning four stars. The character development in this book was better than the first two installments in the Recluce series. I found myself caring for what happened to them. I still think the story gets a little slow in the middle of the book (the same is true for the first two). It's almost as if the author has a hard time developing characters and furthering the plot at the same time. The first third sets up the story and introduces the plot, the middle third is all character development with hardly any plot, and the last third contains most of the plot as well as the climax (in this case, there were two climaxes...I'm still trying to figure out which was the main one) and resolution. Overall, I really enjoyed this book. It seemed to get a little slow in the middle, but seeing the characters grow was almost worth it. With the improvement in this book, the next one is that much more enticing. I'm really getting into the story he's trying to tell in the series.