"The Magic of Recluce" by L.E. Modesitt, Jr.

I've been eyeing the Recluce books for a while. They tend to catch my eye in the bookstore, because their cover art reminds me of the cover art for The Wheel of Time series. But I'd never really picked them up. I did grab another of L.E. Modesitt's books,The Soprano Sorceress: The First Book of the Spellsong Cycle, which I'd started but abandoned due to lack of interest. (I'd looked up the author's website, and he does maintain that you might like some of his books and not others, and that's OK with him. I like that.)

Recently, I decided to give Recluce a try, and so I picked up The Magic of Recluce. And I'm glad I did. As mentioned in my "What draws us in" post, I didn't expect to be drawn into this book like I was. First it's rare, in my experience, to have epic fantasy written in a first person point of view. I enjoyed this change of my perceptions where viewpoint is concerned.

The Magic of Recluce introduces us to Lerris, a young boy, and his family. The Island of Recluce is reclusive, strict in its near worship of Order. This need for Order and perfection bores the hell out of Lerris and after a failed apprenticeship woodworking for his Uncle, Sardit, Lerris is sent to the capital city to undergo a ritual, dangergeld, for those who aren't "Ordered" enough to continue existance on Recluce. The exile isn't permanent, but you do have a mission to complete before you are to return, if you wish to return at all. Lerris is young, and completely untrained, but they send him to Candor anyway.
And that's when the real story begins. We follow Lerris through Candor, where he meets up with Anton, a White Mage (Chaos) and Justan, a Grey mage (who uses both order and chaos trying to balance both.) Lerris follows Justan who sort of teaches him. Along the way, we discover that Lerris is also a Mage, and he must choose between Order and Chaos.

What most interests me about the series is the play on words that help spark your attention. In most works, White is for goodness, purity, logic and acension. Black is for evil, unclean, chaos, and decension. In most of our minds, we probably find some good associations with white, and negative associations with black: Light vs. Dark. Modesitt flips this on its head, by having "Order Mages" be called Black mages. Our hero is shown with a preference for Order, but he isn't shown as evil, where as a White Mage, performing Chaos magic is shown as Evil: starting wars, living beyond his years by stealing the bodies of others. The Magic of Recluce is a novel where one must think. I like that.

It follows Lerris coming of age journey, that he constantly asks "why" and is rebuffed and finally told he needs to accumulate his own knowledge and wisdom and make his own determinations about the world and what is right. And that story is true for all of us. And I think that's what is great about following this story in first person. If we knew too much, from a narrator, or from other viewpoints, the story would not be as good.
The rest of the Recluce Saga jumps back and forth through time. I feel the story is complete enough for me. If they followed Lerris, I might be tempted to add them to my lists to read in the future, but for now, I'm happy with the Magic of Recluce, and have no need to discover the rest of Modesitt's world.

"Hexed" by Kevin Hearne

Hexed is the second book the "Iron Druid Chronicles" and continues pretty much right where Hounded leaves off. This is actually somewhat unique in the genre of urban fantasy. Usually between books, our heros get a much needed rest, and the next book takes place a month or year or more later. While there has been a brief respite, it's only about two weeks later, and it goes pretty much right into Atticus once again getting his butt kicked.

We only leave our characters for long enough to set a few things into motion. The results of Hounded are touched on right away. Atticus has an apprentice, who is off in North Carolina, fulfilling a promise. There is a treaty that is being worked on by Atticus' lawyers, and Oberon is still in need of a belly scratching and sausages.

 While Atticus is a great character, Oberon, his faithful wolfhound again steals every scene that he is in. Oberon has got to be the greatest companion animal in any series, ever. And let me tell you, I love Animal Companions. I first started reading books, like Anne McCaffery's Pern series, when I was very young. As the young are want to do, I had dreams and invisible animal companions. I loved my dog, but I would have given anything if she would have been able to actually communicate with me. From Dragons to Ghatti (Gayle Greeno) to Chosen (Mercedes Lackey), animal companions have always been one of my favorite tropes. Several of my own stories, as a younger version of myself, featured some sort of animal companion. There has, and probably always will be, that wondrous idea that you can mentally chat with your favorite animals.

Hearne's Oberon is such a delight. He's comic relief, because he sees the world through a dog's eyes. He's not a human trapped in animal form - he's a dog, he likes to eat sausages, and have his belly rubbed. He's intelligent, certainly, but the basic "animal" is still there.

*Warning - stop here if you have not yet read Hounded. And now, go read Hounded. It's awesome.

* Please note there are spoilers below if you haven't read Hounded first.

Okay, enough about Oberon. The story in Hexed  makes for a nice segue-way into the third book, Hammered. After the climax of the first book, Hounded, Atticus is now in high demand as a Godslayer, and everyone wants him to go after Thor - who is apparently the biggest dick in all of godhood. He has an apprenctice to deal with, a long dead witch in her head, who has gone off to get said witch out of her head and into the head of a coma patient whose soul has already fled. Atticus is working a treaty with the remaining witches of a local coven, and there is the demon touched land that Atticus feels is his duty to fix, since he was responsible for it getting blighted in the first place.

I did not like Hexed as well as I did Hounded. As I said, it feels like, we need a way to get Atticus to agree to kill Thor, and since he has no beef with him personally, now he owes two of his powerful allies a favor that both involve heading to Asgard and killing Thor. Since the third book is entitled Hammered, I fully expect this to be the subject of our next Atticus adventure. But don't get me wrong, this wasn't a bad book by any means. It does set up our next adventure in a very plausible way, it just seemed convenient that everything works out the way it does.

Still, I do look forward to reading Hammered, and the follow up books that will be out later this year (2012).