The Towers of Sunset by L.E. Modesitt

I've wanted to review some classic fantasy for this site, and I got my chance to reread this book when Tor.com dropped a free epub of the second book in the Recluce Saga. I remember reading it as a teenager and loving it, but many many things change between one's idealistic childhood and one's adulthood. And in this case, my enjoyment of the Towers of Sunset easily doubled in the intervening years. For two reasons: I like depictions of realistic relationships, and while medieval and medieval styled relationships were no doubt different in many ways, the subtleties of understanding between the sexes are always well developed in the realm of Recluce. The second reason, of course, is my devotion to economics and the study and display of economics in fantasy literature. That said, I can see this as a possible turn off to many readers. In my attempts to sell my own work, I've found some who think economics are boring! And I'm not even talking microeconomics, replete with equations and variables and charts, they find the macro stuff boring!

Well, fuck them. The Towers of Sunset is a great book, full of chaos and order, and gives a fascinating glance at the history of Recluce, and the founding of a mighty nation.  Before we get started, a reminder.  The magic system of the Recluce saga is really quite original.  There are forces of chaos, and forces of order.  Order is black (without the chaos of light), and Chaos is white and red.  Naturally, these forces must balance, and so one of our protagonists is a White Wizard, albeit a reformed one.

Not Creslin, unfortunately, no fanfic in 1993

Character: The story of Towers of Sunset begins with a man and a woman.  A man, Creslin, who is a swordsman and storm-wizard as well as a consort in a matriarchal society.  He is chattel, and as such, an arranged marriage is forged to strengthen the bonds with another matriarchal nation.  He spends the first 150 pages of the book running from that marriage.  I found Creslin to be a very real portrait of a man.  For one thing, his desire to flee and find his way is anything but focused.  In my own experience of life, real focus is rare, and most of us fumble through with only the knowledge that we desire something different, and that this difference 'lies over there.'  As such, we follow Creslin to the nation of Candar, where the White city of Fairhaven lies. Creslin knows something of his power as a storm wizard, but he knows little of Order magic, and he adopts a wait and see attitude.  The Whites are fairly sophisticated nation builders, and recognize him immediately as a threat (both for his parentage, and his power).

One stylistic note about the writing of this book:  Not all is explained; a lot is left unsaid.  In general, I have enjoyed Modesitt's writing, and given the fact that he's written nearly 60 novels, it's safe to say he's pretty good at it.  But there are these sort of weird gaps, that are really never explained.  For instance, Creslin's parentage:  his father was a pawn of the White wizards, and sent to seduce the Marshall of Westwind (the Matriarchy). But he has disappeared at the story's start, and we're lead to believe that something strange has happened.  This is the sort of discrepancy one expects from a book in a series, but the first book in the series, the Magic of Recluce, takes place several centuries later!

Creslin is also not an elf, but he does play a guitar

Like any typical young man, Creslin is fairly into himself, not in a crass or arrogant way, he simply doesn't think much about what other people think.  He's strikingly handsome, and would have been popular with the ladies, had his mother, the Marshall of Westwind, not been very stern with her female guards about fraternization with the prince consort.  This leads him to a great deal of difficulty with his wife to be, the beautiful fire-haired, Chaos wielder, Magaera.  Magaera is hot-tempered and bitchy, the perfect compliment to Creslin's good humored, cool distance.  That said, her dialogue, and the manner in which she tries to confront Creslin are spot on (at least from my perspective.) Creslin is simply not equipped, despite massive intelligence for both order magic and nation building, to handle feelings, and the second third of the book is an exercise in frustration for all three parties. (Creslin, Magaera and the Reader.)  And it is SO frustrating: you want them to get along, and to stop fighting each other. But Creslin's hamfisted attempts to apologize, or even to understand what Magaera is on about are cringeworthy, and all too familiar for those of us in the mating game. Modesitt's marital and relationship writing style puts him in a class far far above both Jordan and Martin.

Actual Recluce art, different book, see White Wizard

The only other characters of note are the White Wizards, and they are not directly involved in the action.  We see snippets of what the "bad guys" are planning, and what they decide to do to deal with Creslin, and his new nation-state.  What makes them interesting is the atypical approach Modesitt takes with them.  They are hands-off bureaucratic administrators, attempting to create an ever expanding empire of Chaos Magic, not through fire balls and earthquakes, but through road building, and trade policy!  Truly, road building!  It's an overlooked phenomena in the modern world, but the Roman's success early on had a lot to do with the massive roads they built, which allowed trade, but also quick passage for armies.  Anyway, when your chaos mages can blow up big rocks with a flick of a wrist, road building gets a lot easier.  All of this is extremely fascinating to me!

Fractal trees show how chaos and order are linked

Cliche: As we learn more in the Magic of Recluce, and in the various books that follow Towers of Sunset, Modesitt is a cliche buster.  However, the two cliche's most heavily relied upon are: Order and Chaos. As mentioned above, the theory of magic draws heavily on these concepts.  But the cliche of Order and Chaos is normally quite a bit different, usually Chaos is symbolized by the Abyss. Take the Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan, there the Dark One wants to break the wheel of time, and escape his prison, thus destroying the world and returning the universe to darkness. Not so in the Recluce Saga, Order (or The White cliche) is darkness, calm, lack of movement, structure, stasis, Negentropy.  And Chaos, in a word it's opposite, or Entropy.  Order wielders are healers, taking the chaos of infection and bounding it and strengthening the body's normal structures. Chaos wielders live short lives, but are stronger wizards since they can throw fireballs, lightning bolts, etc. There is one last thing that this cliche buster addresses that is IMPORTANT.  I try not to dwell on racism in fantasy, but fantasy undoubtedly uses racists tropes on a regular basis.  Black magic.  No one thinks that black people use black magic, and no one should, but it's definitely an unfortunate and unavoidable connotation with this common trope.  By making black magic, into good magic, Modesitt breaks with this common trope, and, I think sheds a hair more equality in a vastly unequal world (Check out redditor D3athRider on the Wild Savage trope's racism.)

A new one, possibly, let's call it Red Thread of Fate.  This cliche is the idea that two characters are bound together somehow, perhaps by blood, or some soul connection.  The term I've chosen here relates (see the link) to the east asian belief in fate, symbolized by red string.  Sometimes that connection is one of love, as in Elizabeth Hayden's Rhapsody, and other times by hatred as in the connection between Harry Potter and Lord Voldemort, or the connection between Frodo and Golum. It is a useful cliche for writing, as it requires a certain cause and effect on the other character connected.  In this case, Creslin and Megaera are bound together by their forced wedding vow.  This connection wasn't supposed to be supernatural or magical, but owing to the power of both characters, the connection assumed a greater power than it might have otherwise had. And then, this connection between the two becomes a matter of life and death.

Because Storm is hot, and an X-Men

Another new cliche would be the Storm Wizard cliche, throwing lightning and wind is fantasy fodder for thousands of years.  I mean, look at Zeuss, the ultimate god, why? because he's a badass who can throw lightning.  Well, in addition to being an Order-Wizard, Creslin is also a Storm Wizard.  While the mythos of the Recluce books contains knowledge of other storm wizards, apparently, Creslin's great strength (see Maintaining the Balance cliche) is due to the influence of the White Wizards of Candor on the world. So really, Creslin is the strongest Storm Wizard in this world's recent history. But it's bigger than lightning bolts, Creslin can move millions of metric tons of air, change pressure systems, bring massive rain storms, and turn the ocean into a ravenous hurricane.

Nation Building: this is actually a pretty rare cliche, this book is about the founding of a nation, and so it takes place over a large space of time, through several epic battles and wars.  It also contains a good deal of economics (again something I LOVE in fantasy).  This is sort of a meta cliche, and it relates to the third section of this review, "Completion." A lot of fantasy worlds are entirely character driven, and outside of what is strictly necessary to make the plot work, the rest fails to hang together.  But in this case, Modesitt makes a concious decision to set the stones for the entire saga, and it all hangs together, complete to a bumper crop of a bitter brandy called Green Berry, to how Creslin changed the weather patterns to turn Recluce from a desert, to a temperate paradise.

Medieval Trade Routes

Other cliches only mentioned: The book touches a bit on The Am I going Crazy cliche, Creslin and Megaera's connection does begin to inflect seriously on both of their mental states, and indeed the end of the book has a moment where this cliche is addressed head on. Broken Homeland, Creslin is born in a strong matriarchy that is a major power in this verse, by the end of the book, his nation of origin is entirely shattered. I mentioned earlier this book deals with The White cliche, while true, even this is cliche busting.  Usually The White, is good, all good, all clean, industrious, free from decay or corruption.  In this case, The White is exactly the opposite.  But even that is too cliched, because under the Maintaining the Balance cliche, even chaos-entropy is important to life itself.  To wit, the wizards of Candar, evil as they may be, are not evil in the grander sense.  In fact, the book goes through three generations of White Wizard Tyrants, as each is deposed by the younger generation for failing to contain the island of Recluce. Given Creslin's enormous power, he has taken thousands of lives by the book's end, this forces something of a Hero's Redemption cliche on him, though indeed, the weight of his deeds are never truly absolved.

My homeland (NYC), broken

Completeness: The Saga of Recluce is complete in that, in that this enormous number of books (nearly 20!) Modesitt literally tells the entire history of this world, book by book.  He jumps around a bit, the first book started several hundred years after the founding of Recluce, and this book details the start.  There's even a book that (SPOILER) details the original colonists of this world. (SPOILER END).  And Modesitt is very interested in the practical aspects of his world, he's invested in technology, trade routes, benchmark industries, GDP.  If that stuff sounds dry, well, it is perhaps a bit.  But there are plenty of sword fights too (Creslin's mastery with the Blade is without question).  What's really interesting is just how differently Modesitt establishes this completness record from Jordan, or Martin.  The book doesn't use documentary evidence (via epigraphs) or mysterious old ruins, or names and background of long dead nations.  These are ways to establish a complete history that Modesitt eschews, instead, he concentrates on the present and details it excruciatingly.  This is more on a level with Riftwar Saga's author Raymond E. Feist.  I think one difference perhaps, is that to cite another cliche, neither Feist nor Modesitt's worlds are Worlds in Decline.  They are more or less modern, thriving worlds where progress is derailed by war, and strife, but that the great wheel of progress is spinning forward furiously. So there really aren't massive ruins, or formerly great nations to discuss, because the world is full.

Ancient Mayan ruins, because they're cool

My overall recommendation for this book is definite, but qualified, yes!  It is not teen fantasy, or YA, as the industry calls it.  However, it is classic fantasy, published in 1993 when the genre was really starting to grow.  And, with 20 books to this particular world, it's a good series to start if you want something with legs.  I also really appreciate the seriousness of the relationship between the two main characters, something that is really quite seldom seen in traditional or young adult fantasy.  Relationships are hard, and even love at first sight fades after that first sight, so it's rare that genre fiction actually handles the actual difficulties in making relationships work.  Also, it's just a really cool magic system, worth exploring for those of you who like Brandon Sanderson's magic choices.  My other reservation on this book (particularly for a younger audience) is that Modesitt really does enjoy the wonkiness of economic systems.  It's still immensely readable, and a good way to learn about economics, but it might not be your cup of tea.