Modesitt is intensely samey, which I suppose is one reason for his success -- you know pretty much what you're getting when you open one of his books. He is the McDonalds of sff. *wry*
I vaguely remember thinking The Soprano Sorceress and at least the first two of its sequels were all right, though they were basically Recluce with a different magic system. He bangs the same damn 'money and power rule everything, and you have to beat people up because nobody listens to reason or respects mercy' drum he always does. His books are remarkably pro-dictatorship, with the stipulation that you need the 'correct' dictator. (Actually, they're anti-democracy even on very minor levels -- for example, in Fall of Angels Nylan realizes partway through building a tower for the spaceship crew that he forgot to put drains and toilets in the design... and apparently he never thought to do a public brainstorming session with the crew to cover any of his blind spots. He just assumed he was the only one who knew/cared what needed to be done, and presumably they picked up on his attitude and didn't volunteer advice.)
Anyway, while I liked that he put some thought (and consequences) behind the thing where Anna got shoved into a conventionally young and gorgeous body as part of being summoned between worlds, I kept wishing he'd had the guts to write the thing with an overweight middle-aged woman who stayed overweight and middle-aged and kicked ass anyway. *sigh*
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Date: 2016-08-26 01:04 am (UTC)I vaguely remember thinking The Soprano Sorceress and at least the first two of its sequels were all right, though they were basically Recluce with a different magic system. He bangs the same damn 'money and power rule everything, and you have to beat people up because nobody listens to reason or respects mercy' drum he always does. His books are remarkably pro-dictatorship, with the stipulation that you need the 'correct' dictator. (Actually, they're anti-democracy even on very minor levels -- for example, in Fall of Angels Nylan realizes partway through building a tower for the spaceship crew that he forgot to put drains and toilets in the design... and apparently he never thought to do a public brainstorming session with the crew to cover any of his blind spots. He just assumed he was the only one who knew/cared what needed to be done, and presumably they picked up on his attitude and didn't volunteer advice.)
Anyway, while I liked that he put some thought (and consequences) behind the thing where Anna got shoved into a conventionally young and gorgeous body as part of being summoned between worlds, I kept wishing he'd had the guts to write the thing with an overweight middle-aged woman who stayed overweight and middle-aged and kicked ass anyway. *sigh*