Imager

Imager begins the journey of Rhennthyl on the path first of an artist and later as a Imager, a practitioner of mental magic, in the first of a trilogy as well as a whole series of books by L.E. Modesitt, Jr. The flowing narrative slowly built up the city of L'Excelsis, the culture of the country of Solidar, the Solidar view of the world, religious system, and the practice of mental magic from Rhennthyl's personal experience giving the reader an enjoyable read throughout the book.

Rhennthyl, or Rhenn for short, is the eldest son of a wool merchant who decidedly does not like business and instead becomes an artist's apprentice, but while still a journeyman his art career ends with the death of his master when his talent for mental magic show more sends him to the Imagers on Imagisle. The path of Rhenn's discovery of how to use his magical talent and the sudden danger he soon finds himself is written through his own experience thus allowing the reader to learn along with Rhenn not only the magical system but the mystery of why assassins are after him. Throughout the book Rhenn most not only focus on his magical training and the dangerous situations he finds himself in, but also his family and personal relationships that many times conflict.

There are many enjoyable things about this book, as mentioned before the reader learns along with Rhenn about the magical system and it's uses as well as the greater world. The interesting small details are very well written to add to the depth of the world, but this detailing also hurts it as well. While Modesitt gives details in fashion and food, he neglects to give meaning to particular names that everyone in Solidar knows but readers do not like for instant who are Pharsi, tuadins, and the like that seem to be ethnicities or regional titles of individuals. While it could be said that the seemingly formulaic aspect of the book is a negative, if well written it doesn't matter. The amount of assassination attempts on Rhenn and the suddenly plot resolution, or seeming resolution, does hurt the overall story but not enough to make me want to see more.

Overall, I enjoyed this my first reading of a L.E. Modesitt book. Even with the gripes I had, it doesn't mean I'm not interested in seeing what twists and turns Rhenn's life and career take in the next two books of the trilogy following his life as an Imager. show less

While I enjoy the (some would say formulaic) nature of Modesitt's "Recluce" series, its clear to see why that and his one off science fiction is really his bread and butter.
Imager is supposed to be a brand new fantasy world/epic series. What it ultimately feels like is a low stakes knock-off of his own Recluce series. We lose the overarching themes of order, chaos, and balance with nature, the interplay between those concepts and 'good' and 'evil' and motivation, and are instead left with a world and magic that feels similar but stripped of anything approaching a thought provoking ideology. Even the magic feels the sames, but with essentially no risk/reward...no intrinsically limiting factors to the otherwise mad power fantasy of this show more entirely internal system of magic and imagination. I'm going to read the second book, just because I have it, but I would skip this series entirely. show less

Modesitt's writing is like clockwork: predictable, dependable, unexciting. He creates boring, detailed fantasy worlds and peoples them with walking shadows. The “characters” aren’t even caricatures—that would require Modesitt to give them some sort of personality. The main character, Rhen, exists in this book only to lecture and be lectured about government, and to eat very detailed meals. I do not need to know what fictional wine each and every character has each and every meal, and yet Modesitt seems to think that sort of detail is far more important than, say, a plot.

Speaking of plots, there really isn’t one. I forced my way through this book, but at some point put it down and just couldn’t bear to pick it up again, even show more though I was only ~50 pages from the end. Because I just didn’t care about the thin veneer of intrigue that Modesitt periodically remembered to include, and I found the main character so incredibly despicable (not in an authorially intended way, alas) that I hoped the “mysterious assassin” killed him. This is a terrible book. I recommend it to no one. show less

This is not my normal preference in fantasy but I can see why enthusiasts would like the combination of meticulous detail and a magic-using character who is presented as a sober professional. If I have a particular concern it's that for the amount of violence in the book the reactions of the characters often seem too matter of fact, even for individuals who are essentially security and intelligence officers.

Having heard Modesitt speak on Writing Excuses a few times, I thought it time I checked out one of his books.

Maybe it would have been better to not.

At one third of a book, I'm done. This first third has been a combo of info dump and character study, but no discernible plot to speak of. And because it came in the form of "instruction" to the main POV character, it's done in a preachy manner. UGH! Perhaps the plot is starting to form now, but this is moving slower than a glacier in winter. Any good editor should have hacked much of this first section off, or at the very least condensed the unnecessary details.

The audio narrator isn't that great for the book. He uses the same voice for almost every male, varied just enough to denote age, show more but nothing much beyond that. At first I thought the reader might be John Billingsley, but looking again, I found it was the guy who does the voice of Bob the Builder. Can't decide how I feel about his horrible work.

As I read this book, it felt like an "everyone else has a magic school book, so should I" type writing. Maybe another case of the editor seeing text, checking it off, and moving on.

After this attempt, I'm not sure I want to try another by this author. However, I do always try to give an author two books to completely lose me... show less

I am going to say that this book isn’t for everyone. Hell, it wasn’t for me the first two times I tried to read it. This time though I plowed through it. It is not a fast paced book and spends a lot of time in philosophy and world building. I think the pace was what through me the first couple of times but for some reason I was in the right frame of mind and could not put it down.

This is one of those authors I've seen for years and just never gotten around to reading. Enjoyed this one, although one small quibble is that since the main character is learning, we spend a lot of time listening to him get lectured at. Was still very good though, and I liked a lot of the secondary characters around him, they are all very well done, with reasons to exist that aren't always about the main guy.