Customer Reviews

Magic Engineer (Saga of Recluce 03)

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

This being the 5th book of my Recluse voyage, I must say that I consider myself a veteran of the series. I have read Fall of Angels and The Chaos Balance, The Magic of Recluse and The Towers of the Sunset. Readers new to the series may wonder where to start. A good site that has the order the books were written in is has the chronological list if you choose to read them that way, suggest reading the books in the order that they were written. In my opinion the Magic Engineer is the best of the 5 that I have read to date and its main character Dorrin, is my favorite.

The Magic Engineer centers around a young healer named Dorrin. Dorrin is more than a healer. He is an inventor, a blacksmith, an engineer, a military engineer, a lover and a wizard of order. The themes of order versus chaos are prevalent as it is in all the Recluce books. Modesitt's Reluse series is after all based on his clever order - chaos (good and evil) paradigm and the effects of the world when the order - chaos balance is disturbed. The primary theme throughout the story is young Dorrin's desire to create machines, which by their nature use chaos. Dorrin, being an order wizard, is promptly exiled until he puts more thought into how his machines will play upon his worlds delicate balance between order and chaos. I cannot do this theme justice in trying to describe it, but Modesitt is brilliant in weaving order and chaos and their underlying principles throughout the story.

The story is more than a seminar on order and chaos though. There is a major and extremely bloody war which Dorrin plays a prominent part in. Dorrin as a healer touched me a lot. There is a love story which has major issues. Through all of my Recluse readings, Modesitt wraps his characters in real world issues experienced by many of us. Yes, the book is fantasy, but Modesitt makes us think about why his characters do what they do. How they feel when they do something. How others perceive their actions and the consequences or benefits derived.

Modesitt is not an author that makes things up as he writes. There is a tremendous amount of thought and creativity put into the Recluse books. Because it is a series and because the books are not written chronologically, Modesitt ensures that everything comes together and his world remains consistent and true. There are no holes. In The Magic of Recluse, we read of young Lerris in the city of Nylan and reading The Basis of Order. In the Magic Engineer, you get to see how Nylan was founded and how The Basis of Order was authored. It is great when an author cares about his readers and that is plainly evident.

The Magic Engineer, like Fall Of Angels, has a blacksmith. Modesitt has substantial knowledge of this and other trades which is demonstrated by his writings. It is fresh to read not just that a character created something, but how it was created. The materials that were needed, the design. The recognition that a mistake may have been made in its creation, that there might be a better way to do it or that someone else may be better off doing it next time.

What really makes this book great is that Dorrin is a good person, he loves animals, he helps people, he is patriotic to his homeland and he works hard. He is also referred to as a monster, selfish and the devil himself. How can this be? Read and find out. I don't think you will be disappointed.

Like "Armor", this book combines two of my interests. I enjoy fantasy works, and I am interested in engineering of many types.
Admittedly the cover art drew me in as well. I was pleased to find that judging this book by its cover was worth the risk.
Dealing with common themes, such as coming of age, and rebelling against the established society, this epic moves the reader with compelling characters and excellent description of everyday events. After finishing this installment, which can be read as a stand-alone novel, I began purchasing the rest of the series. As far as I'm concerned voting with my wallet outweighs anything else I can say.

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.

The Magic Engineer is the third book (in order of publication) in L. E. Modesitt, Jr.'s Saga of Recluse. This book takes place some two hundred years after the events chronicled in The Towers of the Sunset. In many ways this book is similar to the first in the series, The Magic of Recluse. Young, Black (Order-based) mage gets sent out into the world to (seemingly) figure out his role in the constant struggle between Order and Chaos. In this book, the role of young cats-off is filled by Dorrin, a descendant of Creslin from the prior book. One word of warning here, for the first part of the book, Dorrin is an extremely annoying character. Once he settles in as an apprentice blacksmith in part two, his character starts to mature and he becomes much more likable.

Like the first two books in the series, Modesitt enjoys showing us virtually every detail of everyday life. It is through these details that Modesitt pulls you into this world he's created, and this is what makes it real. Although you wouldn't think it would be interesting to read about all of the mundane things like black smithing, cooking, or gardening, these details make the characters come to life.

Overall I rank this as one of the better fantasy novels I've read in awhile. Modesitt's system of magic (Order vs. Chaos) is one of the more well-developed and original out there. This book also is a great study in character development as Dorrin starts out a whiny, naive character and ends up as, well you'll have to read the book to find out! Also, this book does a good job of standing on it's own. There are some references to characters and events in the second book, but nothing necessary to know before starting this one.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys rich, well-crafted fantasy!

By reading Modesitt's books in sequential order, the improvement from one book to the next has been obvious to me.
*Note that I have only read the first three books so far, and I know that it would be hard to keep improving throughout the series*

In The Magic Engineer, Modesitt has produced a remarkable book which turned out to be completely unique in many ways. While it began almost the exact same way as The Magic of Recluce, with a young man being exiled for doubting the perfection of Order to go out into Candar and become a man, the book took on a much more mature tone once Dorrin got settled in as an apprentice blacksmith in Spidlar. The imagery in this book was much better than in the past two, and the limited use of sound effects was also an improvement. With such wonderful characters as Brede, Kadara, and Leidral (who are much easier to picture and to keep track of than the secondary characters in the other novels) Modesitt brings you in to a marvelous world in which you can feel close to those you are reading about. (Don't tell me that you didn't get upset when Dorrin had to leave behind Meriwhen, who was only a horse!) Also, with the wonderful inventions of Dorrin, which were very well described so as to be easily pictured by the reader, Modesitt almost has the reader feel proud of some accomplishment. I especially liked the weapons Dorrin forged for Brede. Completely slaughtered the stinking Whites! It was awesome.

I would definetly rank this book as Modesitt's best work so far and look forward to reading some more of his novels.

this book is really interesting, although the storyline may be familiar to those who have read 'the magic of recluce'. it is a book for 'thinkers' rather than for 'action lovers' since the main protagonist (Dorrin) is an intellectual rather than a fighter (but of course, this novel has its share of action). mr modesitt also overwhelms us with lots of details, but this does not mean that it's boring. on the contrary, i find his slow development of characters and plot fascinating and interesting. i liked this book a lot and would recommend it to any one who admires the power of thought more than physical power.

Somehow, I enjoy reading this book. Somehow, I want to keep reading. But at least once a page, I wonder why.

The book is broken down into nearly two hundred chapters, most of which are brief character sketches (of the same few characters!) or "a day in the life of..." static stories. Some of the chapters touch on world events in a very loose sort of way. Most, though, are full of details about what the main character has for lunch and in what order he eats it, which unimportant side-characters he speaks to about unimportant matters, and the steps involved in forging this or that object out of iron. I'd estimate that fully a quarter of the book is a list of steps in iron-smithing, and the steps aren't even given in a way that helps me visualize it. I really don't need to know.

You'd think that, with scores and scores of character sketches, the reader would at least become attached to the characters. Nope. The characters are inconsistent and uninteresting, with unbelievable dialogue. Even Dorrin, the main and most interesting (or only interesting) character in the book, so frequently breaks character that I have trouble believing he's a real person.

The prose bothers me even more than the uninteresting characters and slow-paced story. The author is incredibly repetitive, predicting an event, mentioning it several times (often in the exact same words from different characters' mouths), and then reiterating it. Contradictions abound. Characters or narrative will say one thing, and then a few chapters, pages, paragraphs, sentences or even words later, the opposite will be said. Many times while reading this book, I found myself looking up at the sky and shouting, "Why! You just said X two sentences ago!"

I feel like I'm reading a story written by a high-school student. Mistakes I'd think any author would know to avoid are made every page -- repeating the same word many times in the same sentence, narrating an observation and immediately having a character make the same observation, having characters "begin to do" things instead of actually do them, saying things "look as if" or "are almost as if" instead of just straight out saying how they are. Ellipses are used profusely, for no apparent reason. Am I really to believe that the character heard every word of a dialogue except for "I" and "and?" Characters are called "young" without any real indication of their age. The main character's physical description is limited to "a wiry, red-headed youth." I've met many people, including writers, who make these kinds of mistakes their whole lives. They're usually people who don't seek out criticism and can't take it when it's given.

And finally, there's the central love story. Two characters barely speak to each other. Every six months or so, they have a page or so of dialog before the woman has to ride across the country again, and we're given no reason to believe they have more contact than that. Then, suddenly, they're in love and have their hands all over each other. No explanation. No transition.

So why do I enjoy reading this book? Maybe I just like torturing myself. Maybe I'm attracted by the loose but somewhat interesting plot, and hope from chapter to chapter that I might get just _one_ more detail that has any relevance to the story. The main character, despite his inconsistencies, makes use of an interesting set of abilities, and gets headaches when he lies, which I find amusing. Those few things are enough to merit two stars instead of one.

Let me first start by saying that I only got halfway through this book before finishing it. I'm not necessarily saying its a bad book, I just couldn't get through it. Let me explain.

This is the first L.E. Modesitt book I have read, so I don't know whether or not this is unique to all his books, but the entire book is written in a very odd, active present tense, versus the standard active past tense.

For example: "Dorrin chucks the reins to catch up to Brede and Kadara, for he has fallen behind as the wagon has passed" (pg 82). Versus standard past tense: Dorrin chucked the reins to catch up to Brede and Kadara after falling behind as the wagon passed.

Now, I'm all for experimentation and rebellion, but sometimes its good to understand that standards are standards because they work well. It's like someone made a pizza out of cheese and tomato sauce and it worked really well and became the standard. Years later, L.E. Modesitt decided pizza with cheese and tomato sauce was boring and made his pizza out of vanilla yogurt and cucumber paste. It's still perfectly edible, and you get used to it after the first two slices, but you always wonder why he didn't just stick to the basics of novels and pizza and let the toppings like plot and characters make it unique.

Moving on from my bad analogy, the book itself is a bit slow. Dorrin is kicked out of his home country and needs to make a life in the more dangerous continent to the west. He travels to a small town and eventually makes a life for himself as a smith and healer. ...That is the first three hundred pages of "The Magic Engineer".

I didn't stop reading the book because of the writing style, I realized that I reached the halfway point (I always count the pages before reading and stop at the halfway point to do a pre-evaluation of the book, a bad habit of mine) and I was still waiting for the plot to begin. There's a brewing war between the two countries, and there's references to Dorrin having some special part to play, but nothing that happens in the first half of the book has anything to do with it.

Character development is fine and all, but books are about plots. If it doesn't have a plot, its little more than a boring A&E biography. Start the book where the conflict and plot starts and find a way to skilfully reveal the characters past in the meantime. Preaching done.

The last complaint that I have is that the fantasy setting seems a bit contrived. Good fantasy books are fantasy because the plot simply cannot take place in the rules of the reality that we live in now. Just like Lord of The Rings works because the main conflict of the book is Frodo's battle with the ring itself. There's a few references to who I assume is the antagonist and their powerful magical abilities. But he doesn't use magic to achieve anything that couldn't be achieved by other means. Dorrin is a magic user too, but it only enhances his work as a smith and healer, and he doesn't NEED magic to do either of those well. It feels like the book is only a fantasy because L.E. Modesitt writes fantasies.

All that said, I'm still not convinced that it's a "bad" book. It's just really wierd. L.E. Modesitt writes description very well, and he sets tone fantastically. I still remember the different sections of his book, and I remember my own mental interpretations of all his locations, which is the sign of a great writer. He's a great writer, but I'm not so sold on his book as an excellent story.

In the end: I saw that there's several used copies of this book for 1 cent, and you could spend a penny on worse things. However, my guess is that you'll end up like me. You'll end up eating half of a wierd cucumber-vanilla yogurt pizza before realizing that you're still hungry for some plot.

Well written, strong and deep characters. While I enjoyed the 2nd book of Recluce, this book really brought back what I loved about the first one. Story of an ordinary order mage who acheives greatness through hard work, sacrifice, and heart.

This author does love details. If the "little things" of daily life make a world more real to you then this book will supply you with a belivable fantasy world.

On the negative side- In this book we begin to see the repetition of the same plot with different characters through history. Another drawback is that the stories are alwayse male oriented, there are admirable femail characters but they are never the main character.

On the whole a fun world with characters you care about.