When there’s a long book series, how many volumes do you need to estimate it’s bad and boring, and you are no longer interested in it?
The Saga of Recluce has twenty volumes or so. I’ve read two and a half, and I already know there’s something bad about it.
It isn’t a controversial stuff. But it is, above all, utterly boring, cliched and formulaic.
Oh, yes. Formulaic is the key word.
I really had hopes about this series. I expected it to be a nice surprise—like many “older” fantasy series have proven to me. Instead, I was given something so plain and non-descript that it isn’t even worth of laughing at.
So, why it is so boring? I would say that the main reasons are the narration and the themes. The former is in present tense, and it doesn’t work. Mr Modesitt is by no means Sebastian Barry, or, speaking of fantasy authors, V.S. Schvab. His style is dry and awkward, full of unnecessarily meticulous descriptions and of fixed adjectives matching more a Wattpad story than a true book. How many times can you read of “the silver-haired youth” or of “the stubborn readhead”?
The latter, the themes, are recurring and recurring again as if the author invented an algorithm. There is a young guy who doesn’t agree with his society and has to travel abroad because of it. He’s also a magician fighting an evil White Order, the sorcerers of chaos who are Sexist Tyrannical Villains. There’s also an Action Girl who’ll fall for him sooner or later, and who possesses some astonishing powers or skills as much as he does. Oh, and let’s not forget about the craft. Woodworking, playing music or being a smith—it’s all more or less the same in those books. At first, it was even interesting to see that the author took some concern about daily stuff and daily work. Soon, though, it came out that those descriptions weren’t about emancipating our imaginary on common problems and activities. They were about boring details and about Unusual Mary Sue-ish Heroes doing Ordinary Things.
And girls… In those books, there isn’t anything inherently sexist as for a ’90s series. But I’m not going to wait in which volume and whether there are female leading protagonists in The Saga of Recluce. Just as I’m not going to wait until the style gets any better.
It’s a big dissapointment to me because there were promising elements in The Saga of Recluce’s worldbuilding. There was a reversed dychotomy where Black magic was associated with good and White with evil. But, oh wait, the good is order and the bad is chaos. *tries to not think of Jordan Peterson*
There were also cultures the author tried to built “from the basis” but I’m afraid he failed. Names in this book series are a literal mess and don’t follow any pattern. Descriptions are actually too meticulous to make the setting vivid. And social constructs… Oh, here we are.
You know what often is said about female characters defying patriarchy in a sexist setting, don’t you? It’s said it’s too open and that it’s hardly possible that, let’s say, medieval women thought like modern feminists. I agree to some extend with this argument, especially looking at The Towers of Sunset, the second book in Recluce series.
Its protagonist, Creslin, is a young man gifted with magic who lives in a matriarchal society. Creslin defies its rules openly and constantly, claiming that genders are equal. Oh, here we have our Feminist in Medieval Times, just a reversed one. And I wouldn’t mind it, really, if not an impression that nobody cares about such a character being opinionated but many complain on a reversed situation. And if you didn’t know, matriarchal art is about portraying well-endowed men. Oh yes. Again, what can I say except that the concept was interesting but its carrying-out poor?
And you can say the same about literally everything in The Saga of Recluce. Those books seem to be about great dynamics and great changes but until you start to see a pattern to it, you’ve been already too bored.
In the end, there’s only regret—that somebody else could have described the world of Recluce in a better way.
Left Hand of Fiction 