Wellspring of Chaos (Saga of Recluce) (Hardcover)

by L. E. Modesitt Jr. (Author) "Kharl stood at the front window of his shop, looking westward for a moment at the wedge of twilight sky visible between the slate roofs..." (more)
Key Phrases: oak shocks, hollowing knife, two eightdays, Lord Ghrant, Lord West, The Basis of Order (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
The prolific Modesitt's 12th Recluce fantasy, his first since 2001's Scion of Cyador, delights from start to finish. In the city of Brysta on the island of Nordla, Kharl, a cooper, has a prosperous business and a loving, if not perfect, family. He's also a man who can't help doing right, no matter the cost to himself. He soon pays a heavy price for twice offending the local lord's dastardly son by his good deeds: first, he rescues a neighbor's daughter from two upper-class louts trying to rape her; second, he saves the life of Jenevra, a Recluce blackstaffer (or mage), after she's attacked and left in the street to die. When someone later cuts Jenevra's throat, Kharl is arrested for the crime, but at the trial he can only watch as the local lord arranges to have the cooper's wife hanged for a murder neither of them committed. Hounded from the only home he's known, Kharl ends up on the run with only a few coins to his name—and Jenevra's staff and book. Kharl's slow transformation from family man to lonely wanderer, from solid citizen to wanted outlaw, from simple right-thinking craftsman to fledgling order-master and wizard, makes for a relentless and absorbing story. In a genre saturated with callow youngsters who grow into heroes, Modesitt effortlessly builds an epic adventure around an ordinary, middle-aged man. This marks a welcome new chapter in the Recluce saga, with the ending all but promising a sequel.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Modesitt returns to the world of Recluce. Kharl is the best cooper in Brysta, one of the cities of Nordla, and except for his adolescent sons, leads a life as reliable as one of his barrels. His troubles start when he rescues his neighbor's daughter from assault and then helps a young rape victim from Recluce. His consort is unhappy about the latter--premonitorily, for when the young woman is mysteriously killed in the cooperage, Kharl is arrested, tried, and flogged, but his consort is hanged for murder, which she didn't commit. The corrupt son of the local lord is to blame for that injustice, which shortly precipitates Kharl's loss of the cooperage and flight for his life, as well, accoutred with the murdered woman's black staff and her copy of The Basis of Order. Modesitt's excellent new story has thought-provoking underpinnings that will snare newcomers as well as old Recluce hands, who will slot it into Recluce chronology some 60 years after the fall of Fair(ha)ven. Frieda Murray
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 640 pages
• Publisher: Tor Books; 1st edition (April 17, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0765309076
• ISBN-13: 978-0765309075
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #802,223 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Best Recluce novel since Chaos Balance, if still formulaic, April 21, 2004

By	D. Parvin "dparv" (Boston, MA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Wellspring of Chaos is probably the best Recluce novel Modesitt has penned since the Chaos Balance, a solid if not spectacular addition to a series that had badly run out of gas the last few books. What makes it better? The good books in the series share the common thread of exploring the intriguing cultures and magic of Recluce; the bad ones use it as a backdrop for what has become a bit of a repeating boy-overcomes-obstacles-to-be-world-changing-mage/Emperor/etc. The good news is this has a lot more in common with the former.

The story is one we've heard before and unfortunately elements remain formulaic enough to knock it down a star. Without ruining plot, Kharl the Cooper is a good-deeds type who does a good deed for the wrong person, gets forced from his home, sails around the globe (literally), finds himself in exile, and helps out the land and people of his exile. Substitute sail for wander and Recluce has seen this tale told before - Magic of Recluce, Towers of the Sunset, Magic Engineer, Order War, Fall of Angels, among others. It's familiar territory, for better or for worse.

Now the good news. First, Kharl is Modesitt's first middle-aged Recluce protagonist since Nylan in the Chaos Balance, meaning Modesitt ratchets Kharl's observation level of life's travails up a few notches from his typical kid. This doesn't mean Kharl is any quicker off the bat than some others - his awakening as an Order Mage resembles that of Lerris - but we don't have to watch him do truly dumb things. Second, the wanderjahr is better done than any book since Chaos Balance. Kharl visits almost every major city on the planet in his sailing, and its the exploration of the different cultures in this well articulated world that make this worth reading. Nordla and Austra finally get explored, as well as side trips into Hamor, Recluce and Candar, the last of which features some neat cameos by previous series characters. As it turns out, Austra and Nordla don't feel much different from various Candar provinces, but its still interesting reading. Finally, Kharl does interesting things with Order magic - there's new tricks in that old dog.

The formulaic aspect to the plot clearly subtracts a bit, meaning this is good but doesn't rank with the very best of the series (such as Towers or Death of Chaos). Still, its the best of Recluce in several years, and the various plot threads Modesitt leaves undone means we'll get a sequel of hopefully similar quality.

It's also not a bad entry point for the series given that Kharl has to have the history of Candar explained to him by his shipmates, meaning you get a pretty solid background even if you don't know the series. Those of us who have a bookshelf full of Modesitt first editions and would buy the next just to keep the series complete have a worthwhile read ahead.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars a solid offering by Modesitt, May 20, 2004

By	Joe Sherry (Minnesota) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Set some sixty years after the events of "The Order War", "Wellspring of Chaos" is the new entry in the world of Recluse. Rather than setting the events on Candar or Recluse, we are brought to a new location: the island of Nordla. Kharl is a cooper (he makes barrels) in the city of Brysta. Kharl is a man of honor and he is compelled to do the right thing. He does not consider the cost of doing the right thing; he just acts because it is the right thing to do. Kharl first stops the assault of his neighbor's daughter. He next rescues a young blackstaffer (an exile from Recluse, they are generally unpopular) and takes her into his home to give her time to rest and heal. This is over the objections of his wife. She insists that this will bring them to ruin. She is right. These two good deeds set in motion that which will change Kharl's life.

When the blackstaffer is found murdered, Kharl is blamed by the authorities. They know quite well that he had nothing to do with it, but Kharl's earlier good deeds puts him at odds with them. He is falsely imprisoned and he loses his wife and his children (how he loses his wife and children I will up to the reader to discover). Kharl must escape Brysta before he loses his life. He ends up taking a berth on a ship owned by one of his former customers and works as a carpenter for a time. Kharl also begins learning about his inclination towards Order (which will make sense if you have read other Recluse novels), and who he may really be.

"Wellspring of Chaos" was a good Recluse novel. For one of the few times (or maybe first) in the series, the main character is a middle aged man rather than a kid going out on his quest. This changes how Kharl reacts to things and how he thinks, though he still is a bit naïve at times. As always, "Wellspring of Chaos" is not substantially different from the other Recluse novels. They have a similar feel and if I wasn't told that Brysta is in Nordla rather than Candar, I wouldn't have been able to tell the difference. The good thing is that if you do not try to read the whole series one right after another, this is a good story with a fairly likeable protagonist and is a nice addition to the series. Similar series of events happen to Kharl that might have happened to any number of protagonists in Recluse, but Modesitt is a solid enough writer that it is easy to get engaged in the story and it doesn't matter what other novels have come before (even if there are 11 previous novels).

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Superb storytelling based on gripping characterisation, November 9, 2005

By	ilmk "ilmk" (UK) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

This review is from: Wellspring of Chaos (Saga of Recluce) (Mass Market Paperback)

Modesitt Jr's `Wellspring of Chaos' takes us to Nordla, thence to the town of Brysta to the home of a middle aged cooper named Kharl whose aptitude for woodcraft is quietly pushed along in his cooperage. He suffers from all the usual problems of a well settled man, teenage sons with issues, a wife pushing him along to improve the business, the daily struggle of providing for his family. As a periodical so aptly indicates on the jacket, there are no youthful "callow youngsters who grow into heroes" just a hard-working man who suffers the cruelest of fates when he decides to help a young female Recluce blackstaffer who is beaten and left for dead on his workstep.
The social consequences of his individual kindness means his charge is murdered under cover of an arson, his sons leave him, his wife is arbitrarily executed by the actions of a prideful and callous young nobleman, his cooperage is attacked and then he is taxed out of his home and his place in society is irrevocably destroyed. Force to flee and hide in the town's gutters, he befriends another runaway, Jeka, and his patient, logical approach begins to reveal a hidden talent for order. With Jelendra's staff (the dead mage from Recluce) and her `The Basis for Order' book he kills a white mage who is preying on the youth of Brysta to gain new life and finds himself fleeing to the sea and taking a position as second carpenter on the Seastag under captain Hagen. After proving himself a capable fighter and using the tentative beginnings of his order power to assist the ship he finds himself involved in a political and real battle to save Lord Ghrant's lands. His single handed destruction of a powerful mage and the opposing lord elevates his status far beyond that of a cooper and hands him a minor landholding.
Clearly the beginning of at least a two novel story about Kharl, Modesitt again effortlessly proves that he can create a fantasy tale of true magic around a very ordinary character in much the same way he has done with the Corean Chronicles. It is the mark of an excellent storyteller that you can get eighty odd pages into a novel, pause and realise all you've really done is learn about making barrels and the trade of said barrels, but be throughly entertained. A clear case of superb characterisation removing the need for quick fix plots that lurch from one big explosion to another to keep reader attention because the characters themselves engender no empathy at all. For any fan of the fantasy genre Modesitt is in a very different league to many others simply because of his style. Character is more important than plot, narrative is tightly drawn and captivating and the novels are strangely gripping.
Luckily, Modesitt is a prolific author so there's never any lack of material to read.