The White Order

The Saga of Recluce #8

by L.E. Modesitt Jr.

In this author's popular Recluce fantasies--beginning with The Magic of Recluce--the classic theme of youngsters growing to adult power and responsibility is repeatedly retold in terms of magic skill. Past books focused on the apparent good guys--"black" magicians who use order-magic (cooling, healing, strengthening) and constantly oppose the White Order of chaos wizards whose talent is fire and dissolution. Young hero Cerryl has a natural bent for chaos, and for him the Whites offer the only game in town. Painfully, he learns about order-magic can be deviously used for destruction, chaos can cleanse and anyway requires order-control if it's not to destroy the user. This moves interestingly away from simplistic "black is good, white is bad" magical color-coding ... but although Cerryl is a decent, ethical white wizard, the Order remains unpleasantly tyrannical--for example, an instant life sentence of slave labor for the equivalent of expired license plates. The magic training is interesting if repetitive (apprentices practice firebolts by zapping blockages in the public sewers), but Modesitt's real story lies in waiting for Cerryl to become a full mage of the Order and perhaps confront its injustices in the massive sequel, Colors of Chaos. --David Langford, Amazon.co.uk

Genres: Fantasy, Fiction, Epic Fantasy, Magic, Science Fiction Fantasy, Science Fiction, Speculative Fiction

484 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 28, 1998

About the author

L. E. (Leland Exton) Modesitt, Jr. is an author of science fiction and fantasy novels. He is best known for the fantasy series The Saga of Recluce. He graduated from Williams College in Massachusetts, lived in Washington, D.C. for 20 years, then moved to New Hampshire in 1989 where he met his wife. They relocated to Cedar City, Utah in 1993.

He has worked as a Navy pilot, lifeguard, delivery boy, unpaid radio disc jockey, real estate agent, market research analyst, director of research for a political campaign, legislative assistant for a Congressman, Director of Legislation and Congressional Relations for the United States Environmental Protection Agency, a consultant on environmental, regulatory, and communications issues, and a college lecturer and writer in residence.
In addition to his novels, Mr. Modesitt has published technical studies and articles, columns, poetry, and a number of science fiction stories. His first short story, "The Great American Economy", was published in 1973 in Analog Science Fiction and Science Fact.

-Wikipedia

Reviews

[Wanda Pedersen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Call it 3.5 stars?

This is another one of those series that I'm lukewarm about. The plots carry me along, but I find the people to be so wooden and predictable that I can tell from the beginning of each book just where it is headed. Take one young man with a talent and an unnatural sense of honour and dedication to hard work. Add a young woman that he's interested in, but he'll only admit that if pressed. He works his way through trials that would derail most young men, but prevails through sheer talent and honesty. He's basically a boy scout.

What made this book more interesting was that we finally get a look at the Recluce world from the White mages' point of view. Up to this point, we've had Black mage main characters and they've been set up as the “good guys.” But we all know that perspective is everything and there are good people on both sides of any conflict.

I seem to recall dimly from memories of previous volumes that we witnessed from the Black viewpoint as Jesek pushed up the mountain range outside Fenard. I also recall a White mage at an inn somewhere who resembled Jesek in attitude. Power hungry, dangerous, and self indulgent.

Switching sides gave this installment a little extra fillip for me. It also helps that Cerryl is clear eyed about being manipulated and is quite a bit less dim about women than previous main characters. At least so far. The next book follows him as a brand new mage, so he'll have plenty of time to screw up his burgeoning relationship with Leyladin!

Book number 381 of my Science Fiction & Fantasy Reading Project.

Cross posted at my blog:

https://wanda-thenextfifty.blogspot.c...

[Bradley · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Recluse Saga encompasses a huge amount of time and place, building an enormous history across a continent. Each novel keeps building upon the others although they're hardly written in chronological order. Indeed, we've jumped from the end to the middle to the very end to another middle and right to the very beginning and each story is complete in itself, but all still explore an ever-broadening theme of chaos/order balance.

Enter in The White Order. The White mages are affiliated with Chaos, while the black is affiliated with Order. The greys are rare and odd and usually extremely powerful. Overall, the push of all these novels have been seen from Order side as it does or doesn't work with Chaos. This novel, however, is the first to start with Chaos and explore the intricacies of fire and chaos magic.

Fun? Interesting? Yes.

However -- After maybe 6 of the 8 books, I'm forced to admit that the calm, rational boy who turns into the calm, rational, self-sacrificing man with huge powers IS a THING for this author. They're all sort of... blending into the same composite character. Don't get me wrong, it's a good template, and delightful as long as I'm ignoring the fact that it's THE SAME CHARACTER as the others, but my credulity is starting to stretch. Do only men like this have such power? Well, obviously not. The baddies and the misguided don't behave like this.

Okay. So. I'll just ignore that bit and enjoy the full story and progression and adventure and the worldbuilding. It IS enough. More than enough. Damn cool, even.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

This takes place almost 300 years after the founding of Recluce, as told in The Towers of the Sunset (2P, 8C) & switches to following one of the white wizards of Fairhaven, the bad guys of the previous book chronologically. It overlaps somewhat with the next book chronologically toward the end, The Magic Engineer (3P, 10C), which flips back to the Recluce point of view. The changing points of view, each demonizing the other, really brings home Modesitt's theme of balance & of how little control even the most powerful have over their lives.

I've been reading another book in between the Recluce books, but this time I'm going straight on to The Magic Engineer due to the overlap. There isn't much & the characters don't meet, but there are some common, momentous events that are best viewed from both sides.

This is the 8th published, #9 chronologically (8P, 9C). The full list of books in chronological order is in my review here.

[eyes.2c · Rating 5 out of 5]

Have taken up rereading Recluse Books after reading From the Forest, particularly looking at White Mages. Modesitt’s characters have not dimmed with age. Strong and well developed.

[Todd · Rating 4 out of 5]

lt's been 500 years since the previous book of Fairhaven. l don't know what happened during that time, but the town Beltur and family set up where black and white wizards could live and work together in peace has changed.

Fairhaven is now ruled by the Guild of white wizards, and any written history still in the city now denigrate black wizardry and those who practice it. The whites want to make it a modern Cyador, where they would rule all of Candor.

This is the story of a young orphan boy, starting at the age of 5 or 6, and his journey to eventually become a wizard.

[Bryan Brown · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nearly 300 years after the founding of the island nation of Recluse Cerryl a (probably) grey mage enters the scene. An orphan of a probable white mage he must find a place for himself in the world. The stalemate between the blacks of recluse, and the whites of Fairhaven has stood since the island was founded but is showing signs of beginning to fail.

Cerryl finds his way into the white order at Fairhaven as a student mage and begins to navigate both the complex internal politics but also the changing world politics. This is the kind of story the author does best. A young man trying to figure things out on his own. Trying to find who can be trusted and who to avoid.

The other fun part of this book was seeing the propaganda taught in the white order about the history of Candar. Having already seen what really happened it was interesting to see how things were twisted to make the blacks the evil and the whites the good. In reality they are both good and evil depending on the current balance of power.

Overall this story was much better than the last one. The characterizations never broke and the story was true to form. The book does end with the balance of power still in question. The whites have made a strong play for control of most of Candar, and from what I can tell the next few books take place around the same time periods so we'll see how a balance is again reached.

[Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Next to "The Magic Engineer", these two books from the Chaos (white) perspective are some of my favorites from the Saga of Recluce. Be sure to read this one, then follow it up with "Colors of Chaos". For even more fun, read these two immediately after "The Magic Engineer".

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Recluse universe is based on an Order/Chaos balance. Some people have abilities to use these forces, generally one or the other, although there are a few Grays. Order is Black, Chaos is White. Order wielders tend to be healers & builders, Chaos users tend to destruction.

This is the 8th book written in the series & while Modesitt recommends the books be read in the order he wrote them, I'll agree only for the first read. On a re-read, I preferred them in chronological order. In that case, this is the 6th, so far.

If read in published order, this is the first book written from a Chaos point of view. Up until now, the White Wizards, Chaos wielders, have been the bad guys. Suddenly, Modesitt gives us the other side of the story & he does it well. 'Real' world challenges face his heroes. They aren't all powerful & can only buck the system at great personal cost.

The first two books of the series, in chronological order (10 & 11 in published order) also are written from the Chaos point of view, but the time is far removed (400 years previous) from the next book. They have little in relation, being separated by the width of a continent & centuries. While there is a schism between those of Order & Chaos, it isn't a militant one as it is at this time.

I wouldn't recommend starting the series with this book, but you can. It's as good as the rest of the books in the series, made a bit better by the startling change in perspective that adds a lot of depth to his series.

For more information on the series, see this web site:
http://www.travelinlibrarian.info/rec...

[Liviu · Rating 3 out of 5]

After the recent "refounding and ascent of Fairhaven" 4 volume series, I revisited the two earlier books set there centuries later as I never really got to read them; this one with the usual fantasy tropes of the youngster with power from the middle of nowhere who starts discovering his power and begins his ascent is ok and has some cool tidbits, but doesn't really compare with the recent Recluce books; for completists more than anything else

[Mayank Agarwal · Rating 4 out of 5]

Coming of age, rags to riches story (well kind of), with lots of intrigues.

This is the fourth book in the series I picked up, but the eight according to the publishing order. I decided to pick this book next as its central protagonist was a minor character in the previous book (Book Three). As such It’s a standalone book, one doesn’t need to have read other book from the series to enjoy this one but I would highly recommend others to read at least the first three book in the series before jumping to this one.

This book was kind of different from other books of L. E. Modesitt's Recluce Sage, while retaining the best of what his writing offers, we got something fresh instead of the same recycled material. We get to see the rise of Cerryl our protagonist from a state of extreme poverty to one of power. We see trademark L. E. Modesitt's style of storytelling, our protagonist taking up a practical skill-based profession (sawmill and scrivener apprentice this time), character growth, and with the coming of age a better understanding of magic.

How it differs from previous books of his is, we get to see the point of view from the other side of the conflict. The Chaos mages of the white order are very much different from what I imagined. Many of them actually believe what they are doing is for the greater betterment of the world. I really enjoyed the intrigue and power play among the white order. Also, this is the first book where our protagonist starts off as a child and it ends with him just becoming a teenage Mage, it is really only the first part of his journey. I am a fan of teacher-student conflict and this book is really vicious on that note, also the reflections on what happened in the previous books but from the point of view of the Whites is another interesting read.

Really looking forward to Cerryl growth among the White Order in the next installment of the Recluce Saga.

[Aleixie · Rating 3 out of 5]

simple story, took a long time to get into. throughout the story it felt like the things happened to our main character and not that he went out and actually progressed the story by his actions. none of his actions felt impactful at all.

and because of that, a long story felt even longer.

[John Rennie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Let me start by saying that I thoroughly enjoyed this book, I'm happy to give it five stars and I wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone who just wants a cracking good read.

Now that's out of the way, this is a really formulaic story. Impoverished young man goes to wizards school, battles adversity and makes good in the end (he even gets the girl). How many times have I read this story over the decades? But it doesn't matter because L. E. Modessit is a master at telling this sort of story. He judges the pace of the action perfectly and his characters and world building are wonderful. His books sweep you up and suck you in, and the fact the plot is a well worn one doesn't matter.

You probably wouldn't want to read too many of Modessit's books in a row as I suspect they'd get repetitive. He has used this same plot with minor variations in two other books that come immediately to mind and possible others I've never read or read then forgotten. But sometimes it's nice to set aside the high concept fantasy and just read a good yarn.

[Kathi · Rating 3 out of 5]

7/10
This book in the Recluce series gives us the life of a young lad in Candor, Cerryn, who works in a sawmill and then as a scrivener's apprentice while trying to learn more about his heritage and the talent with chaos he seems to have. It provides a window into the world of the White Order of Fairhaven and presents a perspective that is obviously much different than that of the Black Order. Yet Cerryn's coming of age story is it all that different from the youths of Recluce.

Unfortunately, I read the previous books so long ago that I don't clearly recall the events involving Sterol, Anya, and Jeslek, the White mages most featured in this book. And there were so many books that told of the early events in the history of this world--the founding of Westwind as a haven for the Black Angels and the founding of Recluce as a haven for the Black mages, for example, took several books--that it is hard to place this book in the correct time period.

[Marsha Valance · Rating 5 out of 5]

Modesitt makes a totally new departure in his ongoing Saga of Recluce, where Order and Chaos continually struggle for dominance. This time the story centers on the white magicians, descendants of refugees stranded on this world centuries ago after a starship crash. The white magicians used ordered energies to terraform the world by force, so as to provide a power source from the resulting imbalance for the use of their children's children. Cerryl, orphaned by the white magicians who executed his Talented father, is recruited as a mage candidate because of his own potential for understanding the forces of order. A survivor, Cerryl avoids the jealous traps set by other white magicians,determined both to survive and protect others from injustice. As in previous books in the Recluce series, Modesitt skillfully combines credible characters, an exceptionally well-realized alien world, plenty of action, and as usual, philosophical discussions of power and the consequences of its misuse, into the fast-moving plot. By focusing for the first time on a protagonist of Order, he deepens our understanding of both Recluce's underlying magical structure and of the almost feudal relationship between the White Order and the inhabitants of the lands they control. The reader learns along with Cerryl, who is studying the background of his own society in the Order's school. "The White Order" strengthens the reader's understanding of Recluce through the presentation of the Order's worldview, as in all the previous volumes the protagonists were from the side of Chaos. In the character of Cerryl, Modesitt gives the reader a hero who must conform to survive, but does so without surrendering his own individual values. As always, Modesitt's newest chapter in the Recluce saga is a worthwhile addition to any YA collection.

[Clay Kallam · Rating 4 out of 5]

In some ways, "The White Order" is the best of the Recluce series. It is number eight, and like most of the others, features a protagonist who is humble, hard-working, gifted with magic and coming of age in difficult times.

What makes this interesting, though, is that Cerryl is a White mage -- White is generally the color of the villains in this series -- who would have been on the periphery of the action in an earlier novel. Of course, this being an L.E. Modesitt, Jr., book, he doesn't start out as a Mage but has to work his way into it, all the while dealing with the vicious politics of the Whites in Fairhaven, the capital, and his own strengths and weaknesses.

I have to give Modesitt credit for keeping up the pace in this series, for often authors seem to lose their mojo when a series becomes as much about meeting a deadline as telling a story. "The White Order" definitely doesn't read that way, and it gives me hope that the rest of the series will continue to be enjoyable reads.

[Michael Baggott · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read through a lot of the other reviews of this book before i wrote this one. My thoughts echo a lot of these. After delving into gray magic for a few instalments, this entry in the series switches back to Chaos, giving us a unique perspective of the ‘evil’ side of the good and evil balance. In fact, as with all sides in any argument, battle, war and even on the political spectrum, there is really not such a thing as good or evil, it’s all about perspective, and how the balance is portrayed to you. The white order has good people in it, and some not so good, just as in the black order, and the author does a good job of letting you realise that good and evil, white and black, are not so easily separated in the real world.

[M.A. Rodriguez]

After several books from the Ordered "Black" side of things its nice to get the perspective from the Chaos "White" side of the story; and fittingly enough it does help to balance the world out. The motives and end results arent all that different between the two groups especially when there's a 4 on the other end of the equal sign ( ex 2+2 vs a 1 + 3 ). I thoroughly enjoyed the book but the last portion just kinda drops off as oppose to ending if that makes sense. I'm told though the next book picks up right after and you get a sort of quasi trilogy when factoring in the 3rd story in the sequence (The Magic Engineer).

[Gribblet · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was really into these two books at the time I read them, then became ambivalent in the throes of some better books, but on thinking up exactly the plotlines I realize that I enjoyed The White Order quite a bit and sort of dutifully plowed through The Chaos Balance.

I'm all about those "Young poor apprentice boy gains power to "magic" things and saves the world - you would think I were a Christian or something.

[Donna Brown · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book in the Recluce series is different than some of the others. It takes us into Cherryl's mind where he tries to figure things out, keeps quiet, asks many questions, and starts to talk about how Chaos and Order are intertwined. It was different from the other books in that he is not an engineer. L.E. Modessitt Jr. keeps you reading.

[Ron Souliere · Rating 4 out of 5]

I almost feel bad only giving this 4 stars.
In the amazon scale, if they did their job
you give them 5 stars, and you remove for mistakes.
I want to have room for those occasional gems.
Those old man's wars. etc.
If we used a recent sliding guide this would be a 5.

I am enjoying this series .

[Zach · Rating 4 out of 5]

I go to a lot of the same restaurants and order the same things at them because I like them. This book is like that, nothing new here still a schizophrenic timeline unless you read them chronologically of course. No this is what I came for, this time from the bad guys perspective who apparently aren't all bad. Yeah that about covers it, an unabashed 4 star review.

[BobA707 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Summary: Another classic from Modesitt, Chaos mages in a positive light, very interesting characters, great descriptions in this coming of age book

Plotline: Not too many surprises, but well thought out

Premise: I really like the Recluce magic system, works well and is fundamental to all parts of this story

Writing: Simple and elegant

Ending: Oh yes!

Pace: Never a dull moment!

[David Collings · Rating 4 out of 5]

A nice view of both chaos mages and Fairhaven at it's best

As usual, a well balanced development of characters and environment. I particularly like the realistic development of skills inherent in all of Modesitt 's works

[Helen Fleischer · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating view of life on the lighter side of the chaos / order divide.

[Debra · Rating 2 out of 5]

Besides the fact that I detest short chapters I'm not exactly sure why this was written. It was ok but was missing alot. The narrator was back to verbal sound effects too *sigh*

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

Finally, a Recluse novel that isn't somewhat spoiled by ending in a huge battle of obtusely described Order and Chaos energies...

[Josephine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting to see the other side of order.

[Natty · Rating 4 out of 5]

I do enjoy seeing the story from the other point of view. Having the "bad guys" backstory adds to the overall whole of the saga.

[Chuck · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another good tale from Modesitt! I particularly enjoyed hearing the "white" side of the story after so many tales of black mages.

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Again, a reread after many years, interesting to see things from ‘the other side’ after the rest of the series telling me ‘order is good, chaos is bad’. A good way to while away pandemic time!