Magi'i of Cyador by L.E. Modesitt Jr.My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This book is very consistent with the previous volumes. It is perfect for people who don't care for strong emotions. (Which is strange for characters who are specializing in chaos manipulation!) The characters act ultra-rational at all times, which does not accord with my experience of dealing with people at all. Obviously a fantasy world. A side effect of this is really dull dialog, with no witty repartee, no emotional exploration, no snark. It is similar in my mind to those who prefer their food bland, eschewing any kind of spice or bite. Plus I've realized that there is not a sniff of religion in this series—even when getting married (or consorted, the awkward term used here), the ceremony consists of signing in an official book and paying a small fee. Very practical, but very cold.
The plot is extremely similar to earlier volumes as well. A young man enters his profession and public life and finds that there is corruption of some flavour somewhere above him in the hierarchy. But he calmly and rationally focuses on doing his job to the best of his ability, while being careful about possible plotting. Success always results. As usual, the setting is military and the events are unremarkable and repetitive, which may be accurate but doesn't make for scintillating reading. A distressing amount of the dialog consists of repeated “Yes, ser.”
Lorn is marginally more interesting than previous main characters in that he is not 100% honest with those around him and he likes to stack the deck in his own favour. Lying is particularly difficult among the Magi'i, who have finely honed truth sensing talents. Misdirection and distraction seem to work well for Lorn, who is easily the shiftiest main character to date. I think he is also the first who seems to think he understands women, not considering them to be confusing or unfathomable. That's a semi-pleasant change. On the flipside, his family consider him a “ladies man.” He is also willing to dress as a member of a “lower" social position to facilitate his liaisons and to perform some “charitable" crimes. Possibly as a side effect of his choices, Lorn appears to have no real friends (except his sisters, from whom he is separated by his profession), another first among Modesitt's main characters. At least he has a sincere, loving relationship with Ryalth.
Modesitt seems focused on describing the very boring diets of his world. (That's another new feature of Lorn, his sweet tooth). At least there's less cheese consumption in this book! The other thing I really noticed in this installment was his tendency to provide measurements for everything. How thick a wall is, how tall each man is, how far it is between towns, etc. I find this incredibly tedious, especially when he uses invented measures (e.g. cubits, kays). It reminded me of Philip Jose Farmer, in his Riverworld series, where he provides measurements of every damn thing in both metric and imperial. Add to that his tendency to refer to horses as “mounts,” which annoys me with its clunkiness.
Regarding the cover art, I am glad to see that Darrell K. Sweet has returned to illustrating horses, obviously his favourite subjects. This cover is a vast improvement over The Colors of Chaos, which was sadly forgettable.
Book number 425 of my Science Fiction & Fantasy Reading Project.
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Sweet sure did love his horses. A booktuber commented on all the horses on the covers he did for The Wheel of Time. I stopped reading Modesitt when I came to realize that his "heroes" are often coldblooded killers.
ReplyDeleteLorn is one of the cold blooded ones, to be sure. I had to interlibrary loan the book, so I was determined to finish it.
DeleteSweet illustrates horses joyously. His people sometimes look a little odd, but that's okay by me.