Mage-Guard of Hamor, by L. E. Modesitt, Jr

Mage-Guard of Hamor
L. E. Modesitt, Jr
Tor: 2008

“Same as it ever was”. I should give thanks to David Byrne and The Talking Heads for providing such a simple refrain that can be so easily used to describe L. E. Modesitt Jr’s Recluce series. Anyone who has read two or three Recluce novels will have an excellent idea what to expect, and if you’ve only read the first volume (The Magic of Recluce), well, you also have an excellent idea as to what to expect from the series. The names of characters may change, and the locations may sometimes be different, but there is a great deal of similarity in the storytelling and even in what happens to the protagonist.

Mage-Guard of Hamor is the fifteenth volume in this long running series of connected novels and is the direct sequel to 2007’s Natural Ordermage (review here). Rahl was the latest in a long line of heroes who came from the island of Recluce, a small island predicated on the magical use of Order – which frequently puts them in conflict with much of the rest of the world. Rahl was exiled from Recluce because he was not able to learn control over his Order-based powers and because he was too sure of his own personal rightness and pretty much because the Magisters in control of Recluce didn’t know what to do with him. Rahl is exiled to Hamor, the largest nation in the world (and one frequently in conflict with Recluce). Rahl was to learn control over his order skills and then return, but as frequently happens in this series, Rahl got himself in trouble by doing the right thing. To summarize the entire rest of Natural Ordermage in a hurry, Rahl ended up serving Hamor as a member of the Mage-Guards and apprenticing under Taryl, a senior leader of Hamor.

This brings us to Mage-Guard of Hamor. Much of the novel is Rahl patrolling in Hamor in the effort to put down a rebellion which could cost the current emperor the throne. Through the patrols Modesitt reveals details of the daily life of Hamor, which isn’t terribly different than daily life in Recluce or Candar – which just goes to show that people are people are people everywhere. The difference is with those in leadership roles and Modesitt also reveals the political landscape of Hamor, the trappings of power and the struggle between men of integrity and those without. This is also the same as in other lands. The details are just different. The core is the same.

What makes Mage-Guard of Hamor so similar to every other novel in the Recluce series (and also similar in parts to The Corean Chronicles) is that Rahl is a young man who feels that everyone owes him an explanation of how things work and what is truth. The result is that Rahl struggles through lessons and understanding, and he tries to do the right thing but also finds that he does too much with unexpected consequences. He gets frustrated a lot, but that leads to greater growth by the end. That sounds like Lerris, Creslin, Justen, and most of the other heroes of this series. This shouldn’t be a shock to anyone reading this series.

New readers to the series can start almost everywhere, but probably not with this book since it is the second part of a duology. Natural Ordermage would be a better place to start if one wanted this particular story. Otherwise, I’d recommend either The Magic of Recluce or The Towers of the Sunset. The Towers of the Sunset was my entry point and sold me on the series.

In terms of whether or not Mage-Guard of Hamor is “good” or not, it’s tough to say. I’ve been reading this series for a long time and it reads like comfort food. There are far better fantasies on the market and the series has (for me) lost any sense of discovery or “sense of wonder”. I know exactly what I’m going to get from L. E. Modesitt Jr. and Recluce and I don’t expect anything more than that. Mage-Guard of Hamor offers no surprises, a great deal of repetition, and will probably only satisfy longtime readers of the series who want more of the same. I honestly don’t know what a new reader would think of Natural Ordermage and Mage-Guard of Hamor. There are a handful of novels in this series that I would recommend as worth exploring over this one, but I also can’t point to any that was a true disappointment. They offer variations on a well worn theme. It’s difficult to make value judgments on comfort food. It’s good *enough*.

But like I’ve said before, the Recluce novels are all so similar that I recommend not reading them back to back (to back). Take your time and you’ll be much happier.

Natural Ordermage, by L.E. Modesitt, Jr

Natural Ordermage
L. E. Modesitt, Jr
Tor: 2007


After fourteen Recluse novels a fair criticism that can be leveled at Modesitt is that he repeats himself. There is a certain amount of formula to his novel length fiction. A young man, apprenticed to some trade, finds out that he has some sort of talent with Order Magic (it is almost always Order), is brought to the rulers of his land, and ends up exiled to another land. Sound familiar? In this case the young man in question is named Rahl. He is an apprentice scrivener (a scribe, he copies books by hand because printing has not caught on yet) and while he knows he has some Order skills, he does not think he has many. He uses his talents to seduce a woman and this gets him in trouble and brought to the attention of the magisters of Recluse at Land’s End. They send him to Nylan where Rahl is told that he is a Natural Ordermage. Meaning he is skilled with Order Magic but he feels his way through the magic, rather than being able to learn through books or lecture.

The twist here is that unlike, say, Lerris, Rahl believes that nothing is ever his fault and he is angry that nobody explains things to him even though he doesn’t understand when people try to explain. So, basically, he’s something of a typical teenager, though I picture Rahl as being somewhat older than that. What this accomplishes is that Rahl is moderately unlikeable from the start because the reader (or just me) wants him to just take responsibility and he doesn’t.

He is sent to Hamor to work as a clerk in a trading company for a year (or a season, I can’t remember which) and then he is on his own and will be welcome back in Recluse whenever he is able to demonstrate control of his Order talent. He quickly discovers that the leading factor at the Nylan Mercantile Exchange is dishonest and cheating and while he does not act against the factor he is attacked and wakes up a season later with no memory and on a work gang.

Having the novel set in Hamor is nice change of pace because Hamor has always been the Evil Empire of the series and not at all understood. This gives the reader a chance to see and learn something new about this world of Modesitt’s. I understand that Modesitt wanted or needed to get Rahl from simply being a clerk with limited understanding of his talent to eventually work for Hamor in their Mage-Guards. The next novel is called, after all, The Mage-Guard of Hamor. That’s fine. But was it absolutely necessary to use the memory loss / work gang plot device again? Modesitt did this in either The Magic of Recluse or The Towers of the Sunset. I’m almost positive it was in The Towers of the Sunset and while it worked at that time, now it feels like a complete rehash. Basically Modesitt opens Natural Ordermage with a dash of The Magic of Recluse and follows it with a plot device of The Towers of the Sunset and it becomes frustrating that the author is cribbing wholesale from his earlier novels. The two freshest things Modesitt has done in the entire series was to have a couple of novels told from the perspective of a Chaos Mage (who is later revealed to be a Grey Mage and not strictly white) and to have the guy from The Wellspring of Chaos to be an adult and not be an immature young man. Sometimes I wished Rahl would get hit with a Chaos bolt when he wasn’t paying attention.

From reading over the last four paragraphs I can see how one get the perspective that I didn’t like Natural Ordermage and that I would think it is not worth the time. Surprisingly enough, I enjoyed Natural Ordermage quite a bit. Yes, Modesitt repeats himself (and this has nothing to do with there being a limited number of basic plots, Modesitt uses the same techniques from book to book and they feel like the same novel. Pawn of Prophecy from David Eddings may use the same basic plotline as other novels, but we can tell that it was Eddings and not Modesitt who told that story). See, I’m doing it again. I read The Towers of the Sunset years and years ago and loved it and have since enjoyed the other Recluse novels. If you read too many of them back to back they will start to all run together, but give a year or so in between Recluse novels and what you are left with is an enjoyable yet familiar feeling novel where bad things happen to some good people and trying to do good can be as punishing as doing evil, but in the end the moral thing wins out at great cost.

Natural Ordermage is not very different from other Recluse novels, but if you liked the other ones you’ll like this one. If you haven’t read Recluse, start with either The Magic of Recluse or The Towers of the Sunset and work your way gradually to this one. Natural Ordermage is a decent Recluse novel, and it helps to fill in some gaps of understanding, but outside of setting foot on Hamor, this novel doesn’t do anything that the first thirteen didn’t do first.