A review by snd1101
Arms-Commander by L.E. Modesitt Jr.
4.0
Received through the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program (...in 2009; it's taken me a while to get to it)
I received this book in 2009 from one of the Early Reviewers batches, and FINALLY got around to reading it (oops).
That being said, it's a solid addition to the Recluce series. There really isn't anything extraordinary about the writing style if you've read the other 15 books (and if so, bravo—I definitely know it takes a long time!). As Modesitt has grown as a writer, you'll notice in this book that there aren't ridiculous sound effect noises and there aren't long meal descriptions (which I didn't really mind, but I've noticed other people haven't been fans of them).
This book involves a couple members of Westwind quite a bit that we last saw in The Fall of Angels/The Chaos Balance/etc.—it's focused on Saryn's point of view and Hryessa pops up now and again. I think because it's focused on the female-oriented perspective, Modesitt felt he had to go all the way into man-hating feminist mode (which, let's be real, is not productive in everyday life and is frankly grating by the time you finish this book). It's really a shame that he did, because ordinarily his characterizations are relatively realistic—fallible characters, characters that are neither good nor evil, and characters who have really good reasons for being the bad guy.
But this could also be because the Westwind group tends to be "Amazonian"—they're a group of mainly women who make a living for themselves on a high mountaintop after falling from outer space in their spaceship. They run the men away because the leader is a woman, and none of the Cyadorian men take her seriously until she kills a bunch of them. Okay. Yeah. Let's go with that.
Overall, it's an entertaining read—it's a fresher perspective from an author who's produced two female-centric books in this series including this one, and who has a tendency to not write strong female characters at all. If you've read a few other books in the series, it's just another Recluce book and follows along in much the same fashion as the other ones. Lots of battles, lots of magic (I do really like the magic system—it's a fabulous concept), and lots of "ONLY WOMEN CAN DO THINGS RIGHT", which... I think means Lornth will end up like Westwind, but oh well. (I wish that things had been a little more like how feminism actually works, but... this is an improvement over the sausagefest that Recluce has been.)
I received this book in 2009 from one of the Early Reviewers batches, and FINALLY got around to reading it (oops).
That being said, it's a solid addition to the Recluce series. There really isn't anything extraordinary about the writing style if you've read the other 15 books (and if so, bravo—I definitely know it takes a long time!). As Modesitt has grown as a writer, you'll notice in this book that there aren't ridiculous sound effect noises and there aren't long meal descriptions (which I didn't really mind, but I've noticed other people haven't been fans of them).
This book involves a couple members of Westwind quite a bit that we last saw in The Fall of Angels/The Chaos Balance/etc.—it's focused on Saryn's point of view and Hryessa pops up now and again. I think because it's focused on the female-oriented perspective, Modesitt felt he had to go all the way into man-hating feminist mode (which, let's be real, is not productive in everyday life and is frankly grating by the time you finish this book). It's really a shame that he did, because ordinarily his characterizations are relatively realistic—fallible characters, characters that are neither good nor evil, and characters who have really good reasons for being the bad guy.
But this could also be because the Westwind group tends to be "Amazonian"—they're a group of mainly women who make a living for themselves on a high mountaintop after falling from outer space in their spaceship. They run the men away because the leader is a woman, and none of the Cyadorian men take her seriously until she kills a bunch of them. Okay. Yeah. Let's go with that.
Overall, it's an entertaining read—it's a fresher perspective from an author who's produced two female-centric books in this series including this one, and who has a tendency to not write strong female characters at all. If you've read a few other books in the series, it's just another Recluce book and follows along in much the same fashion as the other ones. Lots of battles, lots of magic (I do really like the magic system—it's a fabulous concept), and lots of "ONLY WOMEN CAN DO THINGS RIGHT", which... I think means Lornth will end up like Westwind, but oh well. (I wish that things had been a little more like how feminism actually works, but... this is an improvement over the sausagefest that Recluce has been.)