scrape_r_rational/data/cache2/5g4z4f.md

[RT] L E Modesitt Jr.

• Author: u/Escapement Ankh-Morpork City Watch*

• URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/5g4z4f/rt_l_e_modesitt_jr/

• Score: 22

• Created: 2016-12-02T18:48:37

Post:

L E Modesitt Jr. is a complicated author to recommend. He writes speculative fiction in both science fiction and fantasy genres, fairly extensively, in lengths from single independent books to massive series. It usually tends to be very soft science fiction full of FTL travel and near-magic, or fairly hard fantasy with limits and rules on what the magic can do and careful foreshadowing of everything before it becomes relevant. Modesitt does a lot that this subreddit likes - the author REALLY loves building backgrounds and settings that stand up to scrutiny and are well examined. He loves having economies that try to make some sort of sense, and indeed a lot of his medieval fantasies focus on the lives and realities of artisans, merchants, etc. He really likes describing how things are made and done in medieval societies in significant depth. His magic systems are fairly well thought out and usually pretty internally consistent. Modesitt's societies meanwhile tend to be complicated and have people responding to their incentives in a reasonably realistic way. There is a fair bit of politics, and lots of commentary on economic stuff. As far as I can tell, Modesitt has a fairly complicated view that is broadly pro-market but also incorporates some ideas on of the necessity of government and ideas about good government, the use of law and law enforcement, ecological issues, personal freedoms, but also anti-social-safety-net/welfare stuff.

Almost every one of his books has points to make about social or economic stuff - arguments in favour of a strong police force and law and order, or arguments in favour of ecological concerns being more broadly incorporated into politics and society, or arguments about tariffs and taxation's effect on trade, or arguments about the role of government in society or whatever. Some of it is cringe-inducingly badly inserted into the story for no real reason, but most of it comes up in the course of the story more naturally. The science fiction tends to be more ecologically focused stuff, while the fantasy is more economics and philosophy of law etc. Modesitt likes to put brief excerpts from fictional books about these sort of things from his world at the start of chapters that tend to be boring and extremely dry, but thankfully you can skip the more boring ones and miss nothing of importance while the actual stuff integrated into the story tends to be better and more interesting. It varies a lot in quality and depth of thought from book to book, but is unlikely to revolutionize anything or change your mind if you've thought about this sort of thing before extensively.

Modesitt writes prodigiously, and almost all of his writing is of a kind; the books tend not to stand out from each other very much, and in particular 90% of his protagonists are super interchangeable, and their love interests are also super interchangeable with one another. There are minor differences of name, of origin, looks, etc. but they are of a single type. Many of the plots are also quite similar to one another. I don't recommend reading many of his books in a row, because they are all so identical that they will begin to blur together. It's not to the extent that, say, David Eddings fell to, but it still gets pretty repetitive. Best to take long breaks between reading his stuff to read other stuff instead. Modesitt's books tend to all be at least a little bit longer than they should, and in in nearly every book there is a pointless and boring romance of an extremely similar form from work to work - the romance never really has any dramatic tension, it just seems to always be there regardless of whether or not it serves a purpose in the broader story (it very often does not).

Modesitt Protagonists are men who are strong, smart, but not particularly good at politics or social stuff. They are good / inspiring / uber-competent leaders of men in military settings very often, but are also personally really good at fighting. In fantasy settings, they almost always have magic and through more sophisticated understanding and hard work develop unusual or unique magical skills that they use to advantage - never something inborn, always something they work for and figure out by experimentation and effort. They are never incompetent at anything important, and usually by the end of the books have a greater quality of understanding of important issues than anyone else. They are all willing to do whatever they need to do for the greater good, and very very often end up assassinating people secretly in the service of a greater good or otherwise doing a lot of really 'evil' stuff for seemingly good reasons. Almost always those villains the protagonist ends up killing are not so much evil as they are short-sighted or unthinking or arrogant, and they end up underestimating the protagonist because the protagonist acts humble or unassuming. Somewhat Mary-sue-ish, but if you like HPMOR this amount of Sueism will not phase you. This description works for almost all of his protagonists - there are only a few exceptions.

The writing quality varies a lot. Modesitt really, really likes ellipsis. A lot of his earliest works were written in a more interesting but ultimately flawed and annoying style, while his more recent books are more generic but less objectionable. The earliest Recluce books had a really annoying tendency of describing a sound and then also including the onomatopoeia for that sound - e.g. Modesitt would write something like "The horse's hooves struck the hard-packed earth. Clop. Clop." every time he was describing a sound - a habit which was later thankfully dropped. Mostly he's got fairly competent writing that is solid and unobjectionable but also uninteresting - it won't bowl you over, but neither will it take you out of the story. It does feel like Modesitt could timeskip much more frequently than he does without us missing much, Modesitt really likes to descibe people's entire lives in detail in many of his stories.

Anyways, some of the more memorable or interesting books:

The Saga of Recluce is a series of books following different protagonists over the course of thousands of years. Typically, each protagonist in the Recluce books has two books about them directly (one to set up and escalate, one to further escalate and climax/resolve everything, during the second book the protagonist usually 'wins' strongly at the end). These two-book mini-series can be read by themselves without reading any of the rest of it. Through the different books you get different sides and perspectives on the history and societies presented in other books, and see many events from multiple viewpoints. Read this in publication order if you intend to read the whole thing - if you are going to read only a little, I would suggest The White Order and The Colors of Chaos which together comprise my favourite two-book series about an individual character, and feel like a microcosm of the story. There are a few rewards to reading the whole thing - like seeing both sides of a major war or other major events. EXTREMELY long, though, as a series. A lot of the series ideas become stale and recycled too much internally to the series, and add very little to the series as a whole. There are entire books to this series that I read in their entirety that I still forget nearly all the details about because they blur together badly with the other books in the series.

The Spellsong Cycle deviates a lot from Modesitt's standard formula, incorporating for example a female protagonist who feels more than a little different from usual. Basically, someone with little experience in government or power in our world falls through a Portal Fantasy into a fantasy world where her faculty for music allows her tremendous magical power, which she must try to use well. It feels at times sort of wish-fulfilment-y even more so than average for Modesitt, and it's not really that great, but it is nice to have a different idea than Modesitt usually does for his protagonists.

The Hammer of Darkness is one of his earliest books, and is a rare standalone. It's about a man exiled to a planet of psionics for having a large potential mysterious power. The Hammer of Darkness has an interesting style and setting that reminds me of somewhat of Frank Herbert's weirder non-Dune stuff, and somewhat of some of Zelazny's more weird stuff. It's central story is extremely weird and often not well explained - it is by far his least 'rational' book and things are very strange and unexplained all over the place - but it's unique and more interesting than most of his books, and yet through all that it still contains an extremely Stereotypical Modesitt Protagonist. I really like the story's ending, and the leadup to that ending is extremely weird and strange. Probably Modesitt's most memorable book. The writing in the book is exceptionally weird at times (intentionally weird), and the start is particularly intentionally weird.

The Imager Portfolio and Corean Chronicles are very similar to the Recluce books, but focusing more than two books for an individual character (usually 3 or more). They are individually more competently written than the earlier Recluce books, but mostly of the same cloth, same sort of story being told usually in sets of three shorter books per character rather than two more massive tomes. The cumulative length of both of these series together is probably less than the Recluce books, though. They are more memorable and distinguished from each other than the Recluce books get.

The Forever Hero is a really strange trilogy. It was written earlier in Modesitt's career and it shows - it's still pretty rough around the edges. The weirdest thing is probably how Modesitt sometimes extensively skirts around saying the protagonist's name in narration and instead describes him by his physical attributes for an entire section without naming him for no real reason. The Forever Hero has a lot of Modesitt's really neat and interesting ideas that don't show up in later works as much. Basically, well after humanity has gone massively interstellar, the Earth has been ruined completely ecologically. One of the survivors from it is taken by interstellar humanity and becomes a genius who ultimately coordinates a rebuilding of the Earth in complete defiance of the establishment who don't want to do it, using nontraditional solutions and subterfuge and creativity to manipulate an entire civilazation to his ends. It's ending is memorably weird, and overall the whole thing is a pretty solid story and one of Modesitt's most interesting in terms of ideas.

Ecolitan books: About a few different people in a far future interstellar universe where one society is focused on sustainable and environmentally friendly things and others are not, and a few different secret agents / operatives doing espionage etc. in support of the ecology-friendly faction. None of them stood out as clearly superior. Very much Modesitt Protagonists.

Parafaith War and Ethos Effect books: A similar universe to the Ecolitan books, but each of two books has a different protagonist. They are about a fight against a bunch of religious fanatics you could round off to Space Mormonism that is expanding rapidly and warring against it's neighbours, from the perspective of other space factions. Very much Modesitt Protagonists. Each of these two books is pretty self-contained.

I have read a lot of other Modesitt books that I have less to say about than the above.

TL;DR: I like a lot of Modesitt's books, and many of them have 'rational' virtues, but they are almost all extremely similar to one another, and the writing tends to be uninteresting stylistically. Recommend in small doses if at all.

Comments:

u/ToaKraka [+5] https://i.imgur.com/OQGHleQ.png (4 minutes later)

Goodreads links:
- L. E. Modesitt Jr.
- - The Saga of Recluce
- - The Spellsong Cycle
- - The Hammer of Darkness
- - The Imager Portfolio
- - The Corean Chronicles
- - The Forever Hero
- - The Ecolitan Matter
- - Parafaith

u/clawclawbite [+3] (2 hours later)

You may want to checkout the Timegod and Adamantine for books that stick out more.

Timegod is much more about civilizations.

Adamantine is more about social responsibility, and a slightly different eco twist.

u/Escapement [+1] Ankh-Morpork City Watch (2 hours later)

I am absolutely sure that I read the two Timegod books... about 15 years ago and I remember very little of it - I might reread it, since you recommend it. I am pretty sure I've read Adiamante, but it might also be worth reading. Thanks!

u/Fellan607 [+3] (9 hours later)

Thank you so much for writing this post, I completely forgot about this author until now! You seem to be pretty accurate about him, I can barely remember the details about any of the half dozen or so books I read about Recluce. Except for that one that was the earliest chronologically, with the aliens crash landing. That was pretty entertaining. I really liked that it was sort of like a better thought out Force on one planet though.

u/MacDancer [+3] (12 hours later)

Thanks for the great write-up! To recommend another author in a similar vein: Lawrence Watt-Evans does a great job of building rich worlds with fantastic potential, and populating them with sympathetic characters who are about as intelligent and only slightly luckier than everyone else. The plots are sometimes underwhelming and sometimes go in almost entirely unforeseen directions because something weird happened.

I'm a fan, but it basically reads like a good DnD campaign without the bookkeeping. To recommend a book in particular, The Wizard Lord is set in an elegantly constructed universe with a strong plot arc.

u/PresN [+3] (a day later)

I'll preface this by saying that I love Modesitt- I have every one of his (68!) books, even his first out-of-print near-future political thriller (The Green Progression). And he does experiment more with his sci-fi books- they sometimes get a bit preachier, but Timegod, Flash, Octagonal Raven, etc. are much more memorable and try different things. But yeah, his fantasy... it's fun. I like it, and I like that he does a lot of world-building for each series and thinks a lot about the sociopolitical consequences of everything. There's a lot of rationality to it. But yes, every protagonist is the same- "cerebral", as I saw in a review once, notably smarter than pretty much anyone else (except the phoned-in love interest with whom they never seriously disagree), end up solving their/their society's problems, at least in the near-future, through copious amounts of one-vs-army violence + assassinations that they feel just terrible about. It does make them run together if you read too many in a row.

Modesitt absolutely refuses to recognize that, by the way- he's mentioned on his blog that he finds it baffling that people think his protagonists are similar- after all, they range from teenagers to post-middle age, with a wide variety of backgrounds! They fact that they all think in similar patterns and approach problems similarly doesn't seem to occur to him.

u/Kuiper [+3] (a day later)

L.E. Modesitt has made some appearances on the Writing Excuses podcast that serve as good instructive pieces that I think many of the people on /r/rational would appreciate.

From "Writing Practical Fantasy":

I got really ticked off many, many years ago when I read a fantasy that had 10,000 armed knights running around on each side. Because being an economist, and having been trained in semi-practical stuff, I realized that when it takes 12 hundred acres to support one armed knight, you don't have a country that you can hold together with horses if you've got 10,000 on each side of a war. And likewise, I always wonder about all these people running off on crusades with no money. The only time that ever happened in history was the Children's Crusade and they all got killed or enslaved. Yet these were fantasy tropes that people were using. I thought, "You know, in this writing business, you really ought to stick close to at least some what I would call human practicality -- the way people actually operate if they're at all human."

Also check out the more recent podcast about "The Environment", and the Q&A episode which covers a variety of topics, which includes this wonderful bit where Lee speaks from is own experience as a military vet:

There a number of things people get wrong about writing the military. One of which is most people understate the element of discipline in the military. There are far too many insubordinate rankers and noncommissioned officers in most military fiction. There is an element of insubordination in the military, but unless you're career or have had time in the military, you'll never recognize it. It's very insidious. It's a polite, "Yes, sir" with the overtone of "you're a complete idiot, sir, but I will do exactly what you say, and we will see the disastrous results of following your ill-advised order." Or sometimes they will say, "Sir?" With a comment which basically says, "Ask me a question. Any question, because I really don't want to do it that way, because we're gonna all get killed." Or if they're really desperate, they'll say, "Sir, uh, what exactly did you mean by that?" Or words to that effect. But nobody will say, "Sir, you're a complete asshole." They may say it by tone, but every word will officially be polite.

u/edwardkmett [+2] (5 days later)

L E Modesitt Jr has a particularly comfortable writing style to read, but it doesn't come off as particularly rational.

On one hand, he does spend a lot of time on world building and an above average amount on the nuances of his magic system for the Recluse setting, so there is perhaps enough there that he can appeal to Sanderson's law and resolve conflicts with magic, always at great cost, always with the protagonist going blind or whatever for a time, or whatever, without it being too much of a deus ex machina.

On the other, his stories are more or less paint-by-numbers or Mad Libs. Let's take Recluse:

from really wanted to be a with a secret love of . <he/she> drinks <some red juice stuff | tea | beer> and wields a <staff|sword|cudgel> made of <black oak|white oak|cupridium>. People whisper behind their back about how impressive was. They wind up becoming a secret <white|black|grey> mage by reading some book from a mentor that they obtained before they were <exiled|forced to join the army|...>.

The protagonist almost always pulls off some great feat of magic in the end that then raises the bar for the next book. In his defense the author usually at least hints in the direction of that feat throughout the book, but it is invariably a "new" power or power breakthrough, which makes it rather unsatisfying.

Three books in this mold is setting a sort of cadence or melody. Ten or however many he's up to by now more than a little redundant. There is a structure to the narrative that is always very comfortable, and in which the protagonist is allowed to be level 1 intelligent, but rarely much more. =(

And going beyond rational to rationalist? No matter what you learn of order or chaos within his world, it doesn't really equip you with any tools for working in the real world.

u/RobBobGlove [+1] (23 hours later)

I have but one question: does it get more mature than the saga of the recluce ?

It felt like something old fashioned but written well. Problem is it felt like a childrens/"young adult" book... To it's detriment in my view.

Stopped reading him after a few books. Will consider something else but I'm not sure if it's worth it, not my thing...

u/Escapement [+1] Ankh-Morpork City Watch (a day later)

The first few Recluce books were more YA-ish than his other output. However, Modesitt really likes to write in bildungsroman that essentially feel a little YA-ish in plot structure in his fantasy novels especially - the fantasy novels almost always essentially follow the life of protagonists, sometimes from childhood to finding their place as adults, sometimes from teenage years to adulthood, it varies a little. The science fiction is more likely to start with characters who are already adults and tends to be less 'YA-ish', but The Forever Hero feels YA-ish at the start in this respect.

In terms of tackling 'mature' or 'dark' substance - Modesitt never goes for explicit sex, torture, or other such stuff. Lots of violence, war, etc, but sexual stuff tends to be elided around or euphemized.

There are tons of books out there, and if Modesitt is not your thing then I don't blame you for not spending more time on his books - they tend to be similar enough that if you don't like The Recluce Saga's books 1-4 you probably should stop reading it because you won't like any of the rest either. This review above is not 100% praise as I'm sure you've noticed - I don't think Modesitt will be everyone's cup of tea, but I thought I'd put together an overview anyways because so much of his stuff fits within the subreddit's bailiwick.

u/thrawnca [+1] Carbon-based biped (a day later)

Hmm. I've come across and read the second Spellsong War book. Didn't mind it, although the occasional strong language did grate a bit. The moral decisions (Should I one-sidedly massacre the evil guy and cement his allies' crusade against me, or let him live and keep working against me?) kept it thought-provoking.

I'm unclear on what Space Mormonism means, though. I'm guessing that you're not talking about our actual doctrines, but rather a perception of us as secretive/exclusive, actively proselyting, etc? Can you elaborate?

u/Escapement [+1] Ankh-Morpork City Watch (a day later)

Space Mormonism in this case literally means a religion based on Mormonism in space. To give them their proper name, the Revenants of the Prophet (aka Revenants or Revs) have a state religion / theocracy based on largely similar precepts as the Mormons. They have employ lot of aesthetics reminscent of the Latter Day Saints, in architecture and their Temple etc. They employ a lot of tech / food / cultural elements / etc not dissimilar from 20th/21st century Mormons. They have an explicitly patriarchal, polygamous society where young men do military service and those who make it back alive/successful usually have multiple wives, and many children.

To quote Wikipedia's article on The Parafaith War:

The Revenants are effectively the antagonists in the book. They are less advanced technologically than the Coalition, and in some ways seem hardly advanced beyond the late-20th century Western world except when it comes to the tools of war. An example is when Tristan discovers that they still use petroleum powered automobiles and have ecologically dangerous cattle ranches. They are behind the Coalition in translation technology, and are frequently much more sloppy with the important mass calculations for translation - the troid ships assaulting Mara were often launched at least 20 years before their arrival, in real time. The society is a pervasive theocracy, based around the "revealed word" in the Book of Toren. The society evolved from a union of a fringe Mormon group called the Deseretists, and a white neo-Muslim group called the Mahmetists. They have an extremely high birth rate, following the old Biblical command to "be fruitful and multiply," which causes extensive crowding and a high resource drain on their planets. Following an Islamic and fringe Mormon doctrine allowing polygamy, and promoted due to the deaths of many of their men in the war, those who come back from the war are named patriarchs who can take up to six wives at a time. Women are expected to be subservient wives and mothers, and are so thoroughly socialized toward that goal that many eagerly seek out husbands from among the returnees. While many Coalition characters are baffled as to how a religion based on an unknowable god gained such a foothold, it has had some benefits - social cohesion is high in the rev worlds, with almost no crime at all. They hate the Eco-Tech Coalation because of their religion's demonization of the Eco-Techs and they blame them as the descendants of the immortals whom caused the destruction of Earth.

The population of the revs is largely of Caucasian descent, particularly tall, fair-skinned, and light-haired people. The society is very much based upon the late-20th Century United States, especially in their diet (large amounts of meat and sweets) and economy. They are also obviously based partially on the Mormons, which may be due to familiarity with them from Modesitt's own life in Utah.

u/thrawnca [+2] Carbon-based biped (a day later)

Hmm. In some ways closer than I thought it might be, though I can't say that it sounds much like the reality. Note the use of the word "fringe". If a group practises self-mutilation and burns traitors at the stake, that doesn't make it "space Catholicism", and it probably wouldn't feel much like the actual lived experience of being Catholic.

Most especially, in this case, the strong military focus, to the exclusion of other technology and to the detriment of the planet(s) - that doesn't sound familiar at all.

u/Lorn84 [+1] (7 years later)

I will say that he has a very repetitive but comfortable style in his writings, and yes, his protagonist is similar in each book. I think that is somewhat comforting to the reader but, in contrast, can prove to be boring. My favorite Recluce titles follow Cerryl from the white order and anything related to Cyador, obviously due to my screen name. However, his books do become a bit preachy at times. Great review btw.

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