Despite the imperfections, Modesitt once again delivers an engrossing power struggle negotiated by a virtuous and talented...
The ninth book in the Imager series moves on some 380 years from the previous entry (Antiagon Fire, 2013).
For a century, the influence of Solidar's Collegium of Imagers has waned, due to weak leadership, lack of ambition and a willingness to contribute nothing except political loyalty in return for the Rex’s monetary support. To his own surprise, Alastar, a talented senior imager (wizard) who’s all but unknown in the capital, L’Excelsis, and has little knowledge of conditions there, learns he has been selected as the new Maitre. On his arrival, Alastar finds that imager training has languished, and senior imagers with divided loyalties have allowed factionalism and a culture of bullying to take hold among the student body. Rex Ryen, the stubborn and intemperate ruler, insists on imposing a huge tax increase on the High Holders (landowners) and factors (merchants), a demand the High Holders contemptuously disregard. Ryen angrily orders Alastar to assassinate the High Holders one by one until they comply—a command Alastar cannot obey but cannot dismiss. Neither the Rex nor the Holders consider the imagers a threat. As Alastar tries to unravel the bewildering yet overwhelmingly important tangle of politics and familial relationships that swirl around the Holders and the Rex, he learns that the army—swollen to unrealistic proportions, rebellious and itching for a fight—might intervene. And renegade imager Desyrk, with ties to both the military and the Rex’s family, threatens both the Collegium and the Rex. With meticulously wrought characters and complex, logically developed plotting that towers above the fantasy norm, it’s easy to forgive the author, here, his unusually pedestrian prose, stiff dialogue and flat-footed tendency to dwell on the nondeist religion practiced by everyone.
Despite the imperfections, Modesitt once again delivers an engrossing power struggle negotiated by a virtuous and talented man committed to achieving the greater good by way of the least harm.Pub Date: March 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-7653-7985-6
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Dec. 20, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
Entertaining, though not in the league of J.K. Rowling—or even Anne Rice. But please, people: no more vamps and wizards, OK?
Harry Potter meets Lestat de Lioncourt. Throw in a time machine, and you’ve got just about everything you need for a full-kit fantasy.
The protagonist is a witch. Her beau is a vampire. If you accept the argument that we’ve seen entirely too many of both kinds of characters in contemporary fiction, then you’re not alone. Yet, though Harkness seems to be arriving very late to a party that one hopes will soon break up, her debut novel has its merits; she writes well, for one thing, and, as a historian at the University of Southern California, she has a scholarly bent that plays out effectively here. Indeed, her tale opens in a library—and not just any library, but the Bodleian at Oxford, pride of England and the world. Diana Bishop is both tenured scholar and witch, and when her book-fetcher hauls up a medieval treatise on alchemy with “a faint, iridescent shimmer that seemed to be escaping from between the pages,” she knows what to do with it. Unfortunately, the library is crammed with other witches, some of malevolent intent, and Diana soon finds that books can be dangerous propositions. She’s a bit of a geek, and not shy of bragging, either, as when she trumpets the fact that she has “a prodigious, photographic memory” and could read and write before any of the other children of the coven could. Yet she blossoms, as befits a bodice-ripper no matter how learned, once neckbiter and renowned geneticist Matthew Clairmont enters the scene. He’s a smoothy, that one, “used to being the only active participant in a conversation,” smart and goal-oriented, and a valuable ally in the great mantomachy that follows—and besides, he’s a pretty good kisser, too. “It’s a vampire thing,” he modestly avers.
Entertaining, though not in the league of J.K. Rowling—or even Anne Rice. But please, people: no more vamps and wizards, OK?Pub Date: Feb. 8, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-670-02241-0
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2010
Solid and absorbing but not the tour de force the Powder Mage trilogy was.
Conclusion to McClellan’s Gods of Blood and Powder fantasy trilogy (Wrath of Empire, 2018, etc.), in which politicking assumes as much importance as magic and armies.
Dynize blood sorcerer Ka-Sedial intends to secure the three ancient monoliths known as godstones in order to make himself into a god, and he invades Fatrasta to capture two of them. Giant warrior Ben Styke, accompanied by Ka-Poel, the mute bone-eye sorcerer (and Ka-Sedial's grandaughter) whose magic can detect the stones, plans to attack Dynize and locate the third godstone. But a storm scatters Styke and Ka-Poel's ships and strands them with only 20 lancers. Worse, the stone is already under Ka-Sedial's control, forcing them to forgo brute force and attempt diplomacy. Ka-Poel's husband, Taniel, despite his near godlike powers, spends most of the book trying to catch up with them. Gen. Vlora Flint, grievously wounded and bereft of her gunpowder magic, burns for revenge yet must engage more Dynize armies and endure political interference. Ex-spy Michel Bravis and Ka-Poel's sister Ichtracia, a Privileged sorcerer, try to learn why so many Palo are mysteriously disappearing. McClellan tells an intriguing tale. Still, alert readers will wonder why the book's villain, having quickly solved his main problem, then does nothing for hundreds of pages and why many of the characters that add salt and spice to the proceedings spend too long offstage or just form wallpaper. True, the author doesn't do politics nearly as effectively as he does magic and battles, and he wrings out few surprising plot twists. His prior novels, with their hero Field Marshal Tamas, cast an unfortunately deep shadow: Tamas is one of the great fantasy heroes of recent years, and nobody here comes close.
Solid and absorbing but not the tour de force the Powder Mage trilogy was.Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-316-40731-1
Page Count: 672
Publisher: Orbit
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
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