Dust Jacket

We come back to Lerris, from The Magic of Recluce. Hamor is slowly taking over the world with machined order. Technology not as good as Ordered Steel, but close enough. Because of that, free Chaos is gathering under Candar and getting ready to explode. Hamor wants to destroy Recluce. Lerris, along with Justen and Gunnar [and their wives] face the Hamorian fleet, give their lives [except Lerris and Krystal] and use up most of the Order [and hence the Chaos] available. Interesting but this whole balance thing, I'm not sure about it. Modesitt doesn't explain it well enough, so one can't judge what he is doing with it or if he is just making things up as he goes and gets away with it because the reader has no idea of the underlying rules [or lack thereof]. I plan on reading the rest though. ( )

Reading this back-to-back with The Magic of Recluse (which it follows directly in the internal chronology, but is separated by three other books in the publication order) really both shows up how unusually weak Magic of Recluse is and how much the series developed over the course of a couple of books.

Most of the writing flaws are greatly mitigated. The onomatopoeia is still present, but as an occasional touch of flavor rather than a method of communicating action - this is much less jarring. Lerris has matured quite a bit as a character - while he's still an obtuse little snot a lot of the time, it's in ways that are much more pleasant to read about and represent much more understandable and relatable character flaws. And the magic system is fully realized and, in fact, taken to its logical conclusion - this is the last book in the internal chronology, despite there being some fourteen others at various points in the timeline.

This is still far from my favorite book in the series, but it makes an interesting pairing with Magic, which it so greatly surpasses. ( )

Good, but the first volume is the best. ( )

Disappointing after book one. ( )