Customer Reviews

Colors Of Chaos (Turtleback School & Library Binding Edition)

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

The Magic Engineer is one of my favorite Recluse books and The Colors of Chaos is in no way a repeat of that book. The events recounted are the same, but obviously told from a different viewpoint. Moreover you see the development motivations and actions of the characters introudced in The White Order not those found in the Magic Engineer.

The author does an excellent job in adding depth to the issues of order and chaos. After reading the book you realize that neither order nor chaos is inhernetly 'good' or 'evil' but both are capable of force and building and desstruction. Ultimately its the people employing order and or chaos and their reasons for doing so that makes all the difference.

I enjoyed the time spent on explaining the motivations of tertiary charcters like traders and perfects even if its through the primary charcters' words. Thumbs up and highly recommended overall.

This is an excellent book, particularly if you have read other books in the Recluce Saga. It allows the reader to begin to understand why the white mages are not universal "evil people". Modestitt evidently felt the depth of his societal commentary was being missed and went into true detail of contrasting Cerryl's perspective of the events to those of Dorin in "The Magic Engineer". Both are following their beliefs as best as they can and find themselves in conflict due to differences in methods for providing peace and prosperity, rather than good vs. evil. It should be read with at least "The Magic Engineer" and "The White Order" to fully appreciate the book.

L.E. Modesitt's portrayals of the Guild in Fairhaven and the Black Order of Recluce from opposing viewpoints are probably my favorite feature of this series. This book tells an excellent story of a young White that is not out to destroy the blacks and his struggle to stay alive long enough to reach his potential. A great book that I would recommend to anyone!

Modesitt is one of the best fantasy writers out there. He has the real knack of cementing his stories with the necessary details of life. His characters don't spend very much time fulfilling prophecies and being whisked willy-nilly through interdimensional portals, instead they stand guard duty and clean sewers and have to deal with the real problems of cleaning up a city after you've conquered it.

Colors of Chaos covers a lot of the same ground as the Magic Engineer, only this time from the point of view of Cerryl the white mage (whose boyhood had been covered in The White Order). My primary problem with this retelling was that it's been a while since I read the Magic Engineer, so I didn't have the best recollection of all the scenes so instead of getting a nice dual perspective, I got a nagging sense of 'have I read this before?'. Also, this was a first time with a Modesitt book that I've ever had a sense of the book being a little bit too long in places.

The ability of Modesitt to change the protagonists from black to white mages only highlights his ability to show both sides of a matter with balance and wisdom. Looking forward to the next.

This book along with the previous book, The White Order, make up a really great story about the white mage Cerryl. While every other book in the series is written from the perspective of the Blacks and portrays all chaos wizards to be totally evil (which most of them seem to be), these books provide a look into the workings of the Whites. It turns out that not all whites are truly evil and in fact many have very honorable ambitions to help the world rather than take it over. The Colors of Chaos was especially interesting because it told the same story as The Magic Engineer (with Dorrin the smith) exept from the perspective of Cerryl. It shows how there are two sides to every coin and that peole from both sides (except a few such as Jeslek & Anya) actually believe that they are on the side of good. In this story, told from the perspective of the Whites, Dorrin the smith and Recluce seem to be the bad guys because of their support of rulers who refuse to pay the road tariffs (to the detriment of all of Candar).

Also, Modesitt's writing style has come a long way from his earlier novels and this book was much more interesting and gripping than its predecessors... I strongly reccomend this book for any Modesitt fans or fans of fantasy in general (although I believe that you'll have a much better appreciation of this one if you read the others in the series first). This book does much to patch up the complex story of the Recluce Saga.

This book is absolutely thrilling. It has great political and economical intrigue. It is made great by the qualities and the diversity of the main character, Cerryl. He is a young white mage in the city of Fairhaven. He was a Patrol Mage, an assassin, and a temporary governor of a recently captured city.

The strengths and weaknesses of Cerryl made the book good but how money and economics influenced the course of action made this very realistic. The political backstabbing made the book very interesting.
Also another book written by the same author blended into this story but was told by the good side. This book was written from the evil side.
Coming to a conclusion this book is a great read. It is not very easy to follow but is still great.

This book is absolutely stunning. Finally, we see a White mage portrayed not as a ruthless tyrant, but as a human being with feelings and concerns for the good of Fairhaven. Cerryl's character is noble, and is the exact opposite of what we have seen the Whites as in previous books. The political intrigue and battles balance each other perfectly. Three cheers for Mr. Modesitt!

I debated reading this book, as it essentially repeated (from another viewpoint, of course) many of the same incidents as described in "The Magic Engineer". However, there was a lot of careful thought put into this by Modesitt, and a much better realization of the similarities between Order and Chaos, rather than just the differences. A much more sympathetic view of the White Order, and an excellent story of Cerryl's growth and development of the skills needed to become an effective High Wizard.

2 part series consisting of White Order and "Colors of Chaos". These "Recluse series" books are sheer joy to read and Colors maybe Modesitts best work to date. Yes its true the book is written from the opposite perspective of "Magic Engineer", even if your read Magic' you will enjoy this one.

This text occurs approximately in the middle of the series of Recluce novels. This happened to be the first of the series that I read, buut I have since read them all (6 times!). I thought this was Modesitt's best story line, because it best describes the concepts of Recluse (Order) from Chaos' point of view. As in all the author's books of this series, great attention is given to character development. Every reader can probably identify with at least one character. I could not put this one down, and ended up reading all of it in one night. Like a good dessert, I was sorry when I was finished!