Rating: 
Summary: great read, love the characters, but thats the bad part
Review: I was browsing at [a local store] looking for a good fantasy, which I have had trouble finding since finishing WoT and Tolkien. I was looking for a large series to feed my hunger for an in depth world and a large set of adventures when I stumbled upon L. E. Modesitt Jr's first book in the Saga of Recluse series. It started out slow, describing the young main character's plain life in Recluse. From that point on the story only gets better. I immediately fell in love with the main character's lazy attitude, and his irritation at things he did not comprehend. His character is very real, and it is easy to relate to his thoughts and feelings. Keep reading this story and you will find out that there is a whole world of complex cultures and kingdoms, and all is balanced on an intriquite system of order and chaos that questions the morals of society. Now to the part that horrified me.
After dedicating a day or two to this great read, I discovered something horrible from a review about the second book. The novels continuously go back in time, which is a great idea, but I was so ready to get involved with the same character who had become a reality throughout the story, and going back in time involves new characters. Other than that the fantasy was great, the world was huge, and the characters and cultures were complex and detailed.
Rating: 
Summary: "Holy cheeze, Batman!"
Review: The Recluse series seems to be one of those fantasy serieses that you either loathe or love. I found the first book "Magic of Recluse" to be moderately entertaining, if overlong and full of annoying little quirks. The hero, Lerris, is bored. In general. Living on the hyper-ordered isle of Recluse is not the best enviroment for a talented young man who wants a little more variety in his life. The dictatorial Masters insist on perfect order, as Order is the only way to defeat destructive Chaos -- and in their eyes, boredom and lack of direction are prime openings for future chaos. After a brief stint as a woodworker, Lerris is given a choice: either be exiled from Recluse, or the dangergeld, a complex jaunt in the outside world that allows him to learn more about it. He chooses the dangergeld, and trains for a while under the masters. Two of the people he meets are Krystal, a giggling swordmaster, and Tamra, a very proud man-hater. Lerris sets out to learn more, with only his pony as his companion. Along the way, he encounters the gray wizard Justen (normally they come either as black/good, or white/bad). As he becomes enmeshed in the local politics and is hounded by whitecloaks (and does more woodworking), he learns that a white wizard named Antonin is trying to spread chaos for his own gain. I wanted to enjoy this book, but found myself rolling my eyes too often. Modesitt has an intriguing idea concerning magic, order and chaos, but he often seems to be a little confused about how it could work. (One wonders if he had it plotted out when he began) It's also nice to finally find a book series that does not have a parade of ripoff Tolkien creations, but bothers to just add some "differentness" to human cultures, even if they are mildly generic in their inception. I also found it very amusing that Modesitt took the care to explain why Recluse and the surrounding lands are living in a medieval enviroment, rather than having more modern technology. The hero, Lerris, is a nice piece of work. A bored teen is hardly a new idea, but Modesitt manages to make him sympathetic by emphasizing the stifling nature of Recluse's culture, not being too ham-handed as he does so. And while Lerris is somewhat short-sighted and self-pitying at the beginning, he is no longer at the end of the book. The surrounding characters, except for the crabby woodworker and Justen, are pretty 2-D. There is some mild hormone-related incidents, including a bunch of hookers beckoning to Lerris and a friend, but this book would be fine for young adults. One annoying detail is sound effects. "Cheezy" is the best way to describe these; fans of the old Batman TV series will probably be giggling whenever Modesitt inserts one of his sound effects. He doesn't seem to believe that the readers will be able to imagine for themselves what creaking floorboards, whinnying horses, and the sound of clattering mugs sound like. The sound effects aren't even accurate. I have never heard thunder "thrum," horses "whee...ee," or a door "itttcccchhh." The repetition will also annoy some people, as horses don't "whee...ee" just once, but dozens of times. Another annoying detail is that Modesitt doesn't bother to describe the fight scenes. He gives us a string of sound-effects, and then refers to one of the people involved dying. It's very hard to visualize, which is doubly odd because of the effort expended giving us the sound effects. One of the last pages also has the weirdest, most obliquely-written love scene I have ever read. I literally did not know what was happening until I had read it several times. (What am I supposed to think when I read about "her hands didn't stop at my fingertips"?) Was a nice light read, but could have been much better if someone had attacked it with editing shears.
Rating:
Summary: Wheee....eeee
Review: The title of this review is the sound allegedly made by Gairloch, the pony; it is the most frequent "word" used in the book. Along with it come the assorted thumps, bangs, clangs, and wooshes alluded to by other reviewers. I assume that someone persuaded Mr. Modesitt to stop writing these silly sound effects in later works. I can't imagine why he used them in the first place. Mr. Modesitt faced the inevitable problem of handling magic by inventing a very complicated order/chaos system. It is so complicated that no one can fully understand it, including Mr. Modesitt, who in this his first book is clearly making it up as he goes along. It befuddles the reader. Lerris is an unsatisfactory hero. He is very stupid for the first part of the book; then, as he realizes he is a master at casting this confusing "order magic" (which he actually understands as little as do the reader and the author) he seems smarter but is still annoyingly self-critical and self-deprecating. I am all for decent humility but I do not especially want the 'hero' to keep calling himself an idiot, as Lerris does. There is much too much space wasted on the intricacies of woodworking, although if Mr. Modesitt is not himself a woodworker he deserves high marks for all the perceptive observations he makes about that craft. But we do not read heroic fantasy to study woodworkers, now, do we, Mr. Modesitt? Mr. Modesitt rather cheats when it comes to describing single combats; we are rarely told what actually happened. Here, in its entirety, is a fight between two great swordmasters (pp. 120-121): "The man's blade flashed, impossibly quickly. Yet, in scarcely moving her own blade, Isolde somehow deflected the attack.
Flttt...
...hsssttt...
...hsssttt...
Blades caressed, never meeting directly, edges sliding against each other.
Clank...
Thud...
The Duke's champion lay face down on the pier, separated from sword and life." He might just as well have written, "They fought and she killed him." I cannot rate this book very highly, although it did prove involving enough so that I read it all, which is more than I can say for Jordan and McKiernan. But I won't be reading the rest of the series, I'm afraid.
Rating: 
Summary: A very excellent book...
Review: The magic of recluse is an excellent fantasy novel about a young man named Lerris and his struggle to discover the truth about the unknown world around him that he has been isolated from.He is bored with the perfection of Recluse, the land of pure order. Because of his lack of interest, he is sent on a dangergeld, an assignment to prove his loyalty to order and Recluse. He is sent to Candar, a continent ruled mostly by chaos. his task is to cross the mountins and discover his true identity. I think that this is a very, very good book, and I recommend it to anyone who enjoys good fantasy novels.
Rating:
Summary: Very interesting
Review: Of all the books that have passed my eyes, I would have to say that is title is one of the more unusual ones. The Magic of Recluce tells the tale of young Lerris, an average coming-to-age boy who lives on the island of Recluce. But on the island they have a custom: those unhappy with life there are either banishment or a special form of exile. The latter are reffered to as dangergelders who are thrown into the world until they have a firm grasp of life. Lerris is a dangergelder. Simple enough, huh? But what makes this book interesting is the magic system. Every fantasy book has it's own unique magic system (as I call it) and the Recluce series is no execption. It is in the form of Chaos vs. Order. All future sorcerors are posses inate magic, but they have to choose between a black Order-master, a white Chaos-master, or a gray wizard that is an equal mix of both. I will not delve into all the facinating details of it, but those are the basics. Another interesting aspect is the characters. very real and well-developed. But what makes them stand alone is the story is a basic good versus evil tale, and the characters, Lerris in particular, are somewhere inbetween. This is truly a facinating book, and it would only be fair to have some negatives in it. The book is written in the first-person-from the prospective of Lerris-that erks me a bit. But the center of my complaints lie in the non-speaking elements. Modesitt does not say the door creaks; he actually writes out in letters what a door creak would resemble if it were an actual word. But still a great read for the more mature and open-minded reader.
Rating: 
Summary: Everything you've ever wondered about woodworking...
Review: ...but were afraid to ask? While I did enjoy portions of this book, and intend to read the later volumes in the series, several things held the book back. First, Lerris' constant complaints in the first half of the book grate on you--you find the character almost as annoying as the other characters did. Second--too much woodworking. Yes, I realize that the author is trying to make a point about the nature of magic and Lerris' effect on the world, but it could have been trimmed. The book bogs down in the middle before picking up and finishing at a lightning pace in the last hundred pages. Likewise, the first hundred pages are slow to start. It is no coincidence that these two sections have the most woodworking. That said, I enjoyed a fresh "scientific" take on magic, and the lack of any stereotypical characters. The villians could have been fleshed out a bit more--their motivations, desires, etc. Still an enjoyable experience, however.
Rating:
Summary: I now know why the back did not contain a description of it
Review: I got this book about in the beginning of lasr summer. I never read because when I started reading it proofed to be to slow and half of it being the main character complaining how bored he is. Then two monthes ago I had to go down with my family to my sisters colleage. Being my custom I brought a bag of books down I did not have a book to read since I had finished the Sword of Truthfirst book which is extremly good. I don't know what possed me to pick this book up. However I mostly spent the entire time reading it. In fact the only reason for this was the fact that I had to read while we set up her dorm. The annoying thing was the parts in the story that could of been the biggest turning points made the main character hardly raise an eyebrow. An example is he some burns a persons hand by some magic and he doesn't say anything about it such as wondering how on earth he did it he continues with his journey. The author seemed to make only a character bulit up and not much of a story. And this is exactly what s/he did. There seemed random parts that are never explained making the plot more of an excuse to talk about a character and his boredom.
Rating: 
Summary: Proof that there's hope for burgeoning writers everywhere.
Review: I'm an on-again, off-again fantasy reader. After trudging through this book - I think I'll be off-again for a while. Fantasy doesn't have to be pithy to be entertaining - but should at least be well structured, intelligent and well written. I enjoyed the setting of the novel, and thought that Modesitt had developed a nice take on the good/evil duality. Unfortunately, the author then went on to do remarkably little with this setting. If it weren't for the plot holes, jarring and chronologically-vague narrative, and enough deus ex machina to make Homer blush, I would recommend this for younger readers. As it stands, I cannot recommend it to anyone. On a final, albeit somewhat petty, note: The English language is wondrously seasoned with onomatopoeia and descriptive words for sounds. I have heard many horses neigh, whuffle, whinny, snort, clop, stamp and blow delicious thick-lipped raspberries - but never have I heard a horse go 'wheee', something I more closely associate with children running around blowing into pinwheels.
Rating:
Summary: Unique Fantasy With Well Thought Out World But...
Review: Several times towards the middle of this book I came close to giving up on it. Yet after a while the main character, Lerris, began to be more and more interesting. It's a facinating fantasy world built around the basis of order and chaos being in constant struggle.
The main basis for the story is Lerris and his journey to find himself. He is from the land of Recluce where order is in every human thing and chaos has been battled out to the point where it can't be found in the entire land. Yet in every generation there are those who are different. They are gifted in various ways but all of them have their issues with Recluce. Lerris finds the pursuit of perfection in everything to be boring. His parents hope by sending him to his uncle and becoming an apprentice to him he might learn some dicipline. His uncle is a master woodworker. Soon he grows bored with this as well and his family knows it is time for him. He seeks answers that if they just told him he wouldn't understand. It is time for him to go on the Dangergeld. He is trained with several others on fighting tactics and the philosophy of order and chaos. They are then each given a mission and sent into the lands outside Recluce where the battle between order and chaos is very visible. They will encounter people who either hate or fear them and three types of wizards. There are white wizards (those who practice chaos magic), grey wizards (those who balance the magic's chaos and order), and maybe even black wizards(those who practice order magic). It is their choice if they wish to stay in these foreign lands and make a life or come back to Recluce after completing their mission.
As you can see it's an intriging setup. Modesitt created a believeable fantasy world. All the magic's are well explained. Yet the book becomes tedious at several points in the middle. The first ten chapters are very slow but I realize Modesitt was trying to give you a look at the land of Recluce before going into the foreign lands. Also I can see where a setup for a prequel is being created by all the hate and fear the non- Recluce's have for the Dangergelders. There's also the mysterious Brotherhood which serves as the protection for Recluce. Hints at major battles having occurred in the years past are ever present. These are all hints that there were some major wars going on before Lerris's time. But to get back to my main point it at times is a yawner. Lerris is constantly looking at things to sense whether they are chaos or ordered objects. Since he is a trained woodworker he also continually looks over the wood pieces of any place he goes in. I have read many people say that they think the constant talk of wood working is stupid but I find it fairly interesting and can see that Modesitt was going for consistency in continuing to go back to it. Lerris's character begins to mature as he progresses through the land and much of it is due to his wood working putting instilling dicipline in him. The biggest flaw in the story I found was the lack of any other characters to enjoy. By the time you started to like someone and their ongoings with Lerris he's moving on to somewhere else. The places he does stay long Modesitt does not give you any other likeable characters. Some word usage is gets used to many times as well. People shrugging constantly began to get on my nerves as well as some others.
So in the end Magic of Recluce was an entertaining fantasy that at times was incredible but others dragging itself along. It is an interesting world with a good main character but it lacks in just about everything else. Yet once again I can see a solid storyline being created for future books. Perhaps Modesitt was too focused on introducing you to the whole world than in building any other strong characters. Lerris crosses paths with countless people in several towns so this probably gave Modesitt a lot to work with in future stories.
Overall a good book. I was determined to finish it and I'm happy I did. Since Modesitt crafted such an interesting world I do plan to at least check out the next in the series. I would recommend Magic of Recluce If you have a lot of patience. Really a three and a half stars in my book but certainly not a four.
Rating:
Summary: Yech!
Review: I picked up this book based on the cover art, something I had trained myself not to do with fantasy books... Impulse buy while standing in line, what can ya do? I learned again why you should never ever ever ever do this! Let me make this clear... I like a lot of fantasy. Tolkien is amazing, Jordan is great, Martin is fantastic, Donaldson has put out two series and a book of short stories I would list as superb, and I can even find some decent points to Weis & Hickman's Dragonlance series. Modesitt does not write even passable fantasy. Initially, the book seemed to have some interesting plot points. After about a hundred pages, I found myself checking back to see if I could find out whether I had missed important things along the way... Turns out I didn't, some plot points seemed to appear out of nowhere with no explanation. By midway through the book, I was chugging on in more or less morbid fascination... how bad could this book get? Undoubtedly the worst book I have ever laid my hands on. I don't think I've ever seen any author outside of comic books actually write out sound effects... It was like reading a Batman! TV episode, only woefully unfunny... It seemed that some sound effects were supposed to mean something to the hero of the story, if you could call him that. He reacted to them, at least, and sometimes things happened in very unsatisfactorily explained ways. The battle with "Foozle" (generic term for the big bad guy who typically faces off with our hero in bad fantasy books) made no sense whatsoever. I'm still trying every once in a while to figure it out. Something happened after that too, it think it involved getting the girl, but I think it was the wrong girl, and it certainly seemed simply like a throw on ending rather than something that was thought out in any way shape or form...
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