Rating: 
Summary: Rah, rah, & bang, bang
Review: Sigh.This was a disappointment. Anyone coming into this series without prior experience of the first 2 novels might have found it somewhat incomprehensible. And I, at least, having read with intense pleasure almost everything the author has written in the SF/Fantasy line, found this not up to his standards. Pretty shallow and more of the same ol' same ol'. I will admit that the glimpses of parenting techniques shown with Jimbob, heir apparent to the country, showed promise. [smile] I was especially disappointed in the lack of treatment of the dark-song drummers, especially after the build-up in Book 2. I guess the book is better than being totally bored, but it is not one I would recommend whole-heartedly to newcomers.
Rating: 
Summary: simply bad
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Treading water.
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: A Very Sub-Standard Work
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Book Three and the series is already dragging.
Review: 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!
Rating: 
Summary: A good third novel in the series.
Review: This novel further develops the story and characters of the first two books. There are no surprises and the novel is comfortable, easy to get back into. I'm looking forward to the next novel.
Rating:
Summary: Oh no, not again
Review: This series is so darn repetitive, it's amazing that it even got into print. Here's how the story goes, over and over again for like 700 pages: "Oh no! 50 guys just walked up to me and tried to rape me again! Let's sing my special song!
Flame flame, come again
kill all men because they're insane" Then all of these subcommanders tell her: "Ah yes, we have 12 score and they have 100 score men..oh no!" Meanwhile, Anna is eating 15 biscuits and complaining about her headaches. Then they go fight and she uses the stupid "flame song" again and everyone dies. Then Anna is like: "Oh no! Death!" and she goes off and kills another 100 score or whatever. This book is pure trash, plain and simple. Don't even bother reading this review about it.
Rating: 
Summary: Not His Best Effort
Review: Unlike the other volumes in the Spellsong series, I felt the characters in Darksong Rising were predictable and offered no depth. It seemed that Anna is faced with the same issues she faced in the last book. The villains are all one dimensional, power hungry, bigoted males. While these characters no doubt deserve their punishments, I would not want to read about them over and over again. This book was a disappointment.
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