"le monde de recluce t.1 ; les tours du crepuscule"

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

Published Feb. 22, 2006 by Les éditions Mnémos.

ISBN:: 978-2-915159-71-4

(22 reviews)

Gunnar, who has kept himself and his family alive using druidic techniques taught by his brother Justen, sends his son Lerris (who is unaware of his father's history and his own magical potential) to Candar to undertake a rite of passage commonly administered to dissatisfied individuals living in Recluce, especially those who have an affinity or ability for either order or chaos. While exiled to Candar, Lerris meets his uncle Justen, and comes to understand his father's ulterior motives for sending him off. Centuries of dominance by Recluce and their order engineers has once again led to increasingly more powerful chaos mages in Candar, with one in particular threatening to cause trouble on the scale of the white council. Gunnar has sent Lerris to Candar with the suspicion that a strong order mage and strong chaos mage will ultimately be drawn into direct conflict, and that Lerris would take care …

11 editions

Stephen reviewed The Magic of Recluce by L. E. Modesitt Jr. (The Saga of Recluce, #1)

Solid fantasy, if a little oldfashioned

3 stars

I have not read any other Recluce books so at this point it feels like a very generic fantasy book, although not in a bad way. It's well written, the world building is interesting. The character is growing up and learning about this world bit by bit.

It'd be nicer if he was slightly less interested in boobs. And there's only so many books I can read in my life where the adolescent is told by everyone "study X" and he whines about it for most of the book and then does do X and lo and behold it works. Yeah, it's very believable, but I can have less realism.

The travelogue parts of the book do have a lot more struggle with the weather and food, which is nice.