Customer Reviews

Darksong Rising (Spellsong Cycle)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I adore 95% of Modesitt's writing, and have read all his books. And, I am very very comfortable with his feminist support vibes in this particular series. This book, however, seemed to be parked on the tarmack awaiting a signal from the tower for lift off. I would prefer that Anna get past the self absorbed, menopausal whining and complaining. She is portrayed as THE most powerful person on that world, yet she has mastered neither her emotions, nor her self pity. Too much self-talk nattering plus the reminders of her gluttonous nutrition are waaaaay boring. I had hoped for a deeper exploration of drum magic and for a more dynamic battle over the magic power struggle between Anna and the sicko, perverted teenage ruler Rabyn. I want to know more about the Matriarch and the Seers in Wei, and where/when they will come alive in this storyline. Anna needs to meet with the aforesaid powerful women, find her inner power, stop her whining, and as much as I have loved the developing flirtation with Lord Jecks she needs to get it on with or marry him. A much richer character development is needed by now on all the principals in this story. I would like greater insight into the use of "music magic" as it still is not concrete enough to be believable. Can Anna get her daughter to send books across the mist on pharmacology/chemistry/herbology so she can develop even rudimentary medicine to help her new people? The best part of this book were the closing 4 or 5 paragraphs. Mr. Modesitt warmed my heart with the exquisite, breathless moment of that long awaited recognition of love between Anna and Jecks. Even with the feminist focus in these novels, the author's message of love provided the true power in this story that, hopefully in future novels in this series may awaken and transform Anna at last.

This book could have been titled "The Spellsong War, Part 2" due to the lack of any fresh plot direction. Again, the story of Anna and Defalk revolves around subduing rebellious lords and hostile neighbors, restructuring society, Anna's attraction to Jecks, and her inner turmoil over her lethal use of magic. By repeating the plot of the last book without providing a sense of an underlying purpose or direction, Modesitt reduces the series to a list of battles that prompts this reader to ask "so what?" Another disappointing aspect of this book was that after all the build-up about Anna's enemies and their drums, the actual confrontations were anti-climactic. Victory came too easily and quickly, even when Anna was caught off-guard. We did not see any protracted magical struggle or situation where Anna was overwhelmed, forced to retreat, and compelled to devise a new strategy. If Modesitt plans to continue this series, I hope he introduces some fresh elements.

Sorry if this review appears twice, but Netscape crashed when I hit the submit button!

"Darksong Rising" is a worthy successor to the two earlier books in the series. Anna is a believable (and enjoyable) character, and her attempts to wrestle with a new world are good entertainment. The transformation of Defalk continues, and her efforts make a really enjoyable read. Yes, she does whine a bit much about her exile from her children (although in this one at least a hint that she might be recognising that her new life is better). Yes, her sexual frustration over Jecks is also a bit much, too often. But she is entitled to some complaints, given the calls made upon her for selfless sacrifice to help others. I agree too that we could do with a bit less of the "men are dreadful" line. But her magical conflicts are excellent, and I would recommend the series to any fan of fantasy.

Simply bad

Once I start a fantasy series, I tend to stick with it. This was my main reason for buying Darksong Rising. However, I intend to make an exception for this series from now on if the author doesn't do the decent thing and abandon it.

A typical scene from the book is as follows: Anna, the heroine, rides off to some castle, tries to treat with her enemies, they aren't interested so she vapes them with fire from the sky and that's the end of them. This happens repeatedly. Where in the first two books there was a little development and variety, in the third book, she's mastered the approach and just does the same thing again and again.

Watching the heroine successfully utilize the same super weapon in the same way every time is just boring. It's also simply not believable that if someone has a super weapon that word would not get about so no one would cross her. There's some explanation in the text that the men are too sexist to take a sorceress seriously but it's supposed to be a world with a history of sorcery and sorceresses in particular.

The spells are not very believable either. A spell that calls flame down from the heavens on anyone who doesn't treat women well just doesn't ring true. The author does not appear to have thought very clearly about how spellsong works or what its limitations are.

The fundamental problem with the book however is a lack of feeling of progression. There are no setbacks suffered to be overcome, no difficult problems solved, just a sorceress riding aroung on horseback and vaping her rather capricious and stupid enemies.

In short, don't buy it.

I enjoyed the first two in this series, but this one was, frankly, just stupid in places. Not only were the characters black-and-white cutouts rehashed from the previous books, but the sorceress herself was just plain dumb at times. If you know the Bad Guy uses huge drums to amplify his magic and you have this convenient spell that rains fire from the heavens, it might occur to any sentient being to hit the drums with the fire while the Bad Guy is asleep, instead of waiting until he wakes up and tries to defend himself. Apparently that's too much to hope for.

Also too much to hope is moral ambiguity and any chance that someone the sorceress dislikes at first glance will turn out to be anything other than a Bad Guy (possibly temporarily tolerated for Political Purposes).

I had high hopes for this series. Pity this book is in it.

I am a fan of most L.E Modesitt stories, and have always been a fan of strong female characters that are well written.

True, some parts of the story seem to drag because SOME people like to get to the action quick and in a hurry and get tired of reading about peoples motivations. If a story is written poorly and boring then people would put the book down and never get to the end. Not so with this book. The Author does a good job of letting us see the workload that Anna must face on a constant basis and doesn't go the easy route of just giving her a bunch of efficient underlings to handle the menial stuff. In a still interesting way we get to see that all of her decisions are not easy ones and the things she does have consequences not just for herself but for the entire Kingdom of Defalk.

In the story, though her actions seem roundabout to some, she gradually wins those in her immediate circle of influence over to her point of view. Those lords and rulers who are too wrapped up in their own way of thinking to change will learn that its not easy to overcome the Soprano Sorceress.

The book had that building energy that you get with a thunderstorm that is on the horizon. You are not sure when it will actually strike with lightning but when it does the thunder makes you jump.

This book was a very good read and if you enjoy a good story that lets you understand the motivations of a character then you will enjoy reading this book. One of the worst things in a story are when a person makes stupid decisions just to enhance a problem later in a storyline. If the characters make mistakes in this book you are made to understand why, either through prejudice, misinformation or just not having enough time, you the reader get to appreciate the motivations and you enjoy the ending when it comes.

Hope there is another book when the characters get a little older!

This third book in the Spellsong Cycle left me a little unsatisfied. I say a little and I mean it literally, because when this book was good it was DY-NO-MITE ala Jay Jay Evans. However, I did find myself wishing that Modessitt would get a little more experimental or playful with the story at times. For example:
- What would happen if she fretted her lutar? Wouldn't it be louder?
- What would happen if her daughter sent her a bunch of Earth-made, precision instruments? What about a really simple phonograph and symphony records? It wouldn't amplify, but it would probably be earth-shakingly magical in one area.
- I'd like to learn more about Jecks. Maybe even have a whole chapter devoted to Jecks and what he was doing. That would have been great in this book because he was in the castle by himself for who knows how long. What did he have to do?

Here is the good and the bad of Darkson Rising.

Good:
1) I loved this one idea that Anna had for solving her money problems - and the realistic issues raised by it. That falls a little into the "experimental/playful" category I was just complaining about. This was awesome, but I wish there had been more about it or like it.
2) I was happy with the character development of Jimbob. I'd like more!
3) I love the merit system she forces down everyone's throat, and her constant reminders to anyone who urges her to be cautious and move slowly that Defalk needs to change or it will fail.
4) I was very happy to see Anna actually have a challenge with young prophet. Too often she shows up, sings, cries about it, eats something and then rides on to do it again.
5) I appreciate the way Modessitt portrays people who are good and evil. Konstinn doesn't appear to be completely evil, and the lord of the Western Marches doesn't appear completely good - and its done realistically. I like this because it allows for unpredictability from the characters.

Bad:
1) I get it - sorcery makes her hungry. I have an idea that would save Modessitt lots of repetition and typing and us a lot of repetitive reading: she makes a really well-worded song which enchants a bag in such a way that the food inside of it transfers to her stomach all day long, bit by bit, every hour on the hour.
2) Lord Jecks is going to obviously be a more important character later - lets learn a little more about him. He's very two-dimensional and it'd be better if he wasn't.
3) I'd like to know more about the world and its magic system. How does the music-magic work? How far back does this world's history go? What is its relationship to the mist worlds? Are there other magics in the mist worlds? Could Anna go there for help with something? Could they threaten invasion? This isn't a bad point so much as another wish list - my apologies.
4) Here's a genuine bad point: Anna defeated the Sturanese (sp?) in a most humiliating manner, yet we only see Nordwei and that southern country's reactions to the things she does. We see nothing from the Sturanese - I think they WOULD react or plot her downfall, and I expect to see more about them in later books.

Ok, that's all. Yes, I gave this book a 4 because I really liked the plot, the characters and all the things that happened. But I'm left craving more of the imagination and invention that I've gotten from the author - to a greater or lesser extent - in the other books that I've read by him.

Strange book. Modesitt is almost always an entertaining writer-- this is no exception. His books are adept at introducing realism into fantasy, the characters worry about unions and logistics and politics more than they do evil and magic and that is one of the things that I very much like about his writing. I liked this book for the very same reasons.

As a series entry, however, _Darksong Rising_ is oddly lacking. We see no character development from Anna and no real continuation of the older more interesting threads (Seers of Wei, for instance)and seemingly nothing new is introduced to be picked up later. It's as though Modesitt had to turn out a new installment for the publishers, but hadn't quite figured out where he needs to take his little fantasy-based political experiment. There are some interesting questions raised here (as in the others of the series) about cultural change, appropriate use of power, and political systems but I think that in order to keep the readers' attention Modesitt is going to have to come up with an equally interesting plot direction.

After reading what passes for literature in some of the other genres, to I think I'll stick with this series. It is a solid addition to the series, if somewhat predictable at times. The plot is still rock solid and keeps you turning pages, which of course are what all good books do.

The first book in this series contained a very clever and fresh idea. The second book developed it nicely. The third book, however, is a disaster, and one can only hope from the ending, that it is the last. One of Modesitt's strong points, certainly in the Magic of Recluse books, is to blend action with introspection within a more or less steady growth. This pattern certainly characterizes the first two books of the present series, and then it stops. Anna does not develop in the book, she makes no attempts at finding any sort of alternatives to flaming those she doesn't like, nor does she look into some expansion of the magic that she does or any attempt at understanding it. She endlessly agonizes over whether or not she's justified in killing thousands to impose her idea of what's right, only to come to the conclusion that "damn right, it's justified!" Is it? I think not. It's certainly the easy way. In the first two books Anna thrashes about not knowing what she's really doing. In this book she knows all too well. Not a very nice person, if you ask me. This book may appeal to fanatic feminists who would love nothing more than to off whoever disagrees with them, but I think that Modesitt has vastly oversimplified and not really wrestled with the issues as he has done so well in other books. A very, very disappointing book.