Great story, worth a listen

Read this book years ago and remember enjoying it at the time. Easy to read and an engaging story.

Since then I’ve read a lot more in the fantasy / world building genre and still enjoyed coming back to this book

A very flawed main character and a large number of fantasy tropes still provides a great story to get into.

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Slowly builds up

I got a lot more out of the second half of the story. The animal sounds were really off putting.

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Excellent narrator

I have loved this story for years - it's a novel take on the standard quest/coming of age high fantasy trope,with a very different magical structure - and thought that Kirby Heyborne did an excellent job of narrating it.

Unfortunately, listening to, rather than reading the story I realised that I have outgrown it slightly. Lerris is arrogant, immature, and his attitude towards women is a horrible mix of boob-obsessed adolescent male and smugly patriarchal elder. His internal monologue veers between self-pity and taking the weight of the world upon himself. The supporting characters are well done, though, with Justen and Krista being favourites of mine.

L.E Modesitt Jr has a horrible habit of referring to people as 'the redhead', 'the grey wizard', etc., which grated. There's also places where a good editor may have made the prose less clunkily ponderous and repetitive. He also uses sound effects...these were okay if weird to read, but poor Kirby Heyborne got stuck impersonating horses, birds, creaky floorboards, swords clashing and more.

All that aside, its still an entertaining story with flashes of excellence, you just need to make allowances for an immature, self-obsessed hero, a LOT of woodwork, and some truly odd authorial quirks.

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I’m over 6 hours in and nothing has happened!

I mean literally nothing but lots of woodwork. It is becoming more of a chore now

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Immerse yourself in this world

Lovely writing, good story but not very action based. Strong Canadian accent will make hard to hear at first.

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Good world building

The book was exceptionally realistic in world building. The characters were realistically limited, no omnipotent evil guys to fight here. Liked the book more than expected, will continue the series.
The book apparently contained descriptions of sound here and there: those were challenging to the narrator, but this did not subtract from enjoyment too much.

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Never met a main character who gets ‘bored’ so often

Not a bad storyline and it’s your typical fantasy but the main character could do with a little more depth.

One niggle with the story is that you start to wonder how many different things the guy is going to find boring

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unputadownable

very entertaining from start to finish, I loved all the character's and fell in love with the ladies.

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Narrator stopped me finishing

I was really enjoying the story but the constant vocal sound effects eventually got the better of
me and I had to stop listening. A real shame

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Good read but horrible sound affects!

Would you listen to The Magic of Recluce again? Why?

No, because once listened to I cannot listen again as I know what's coming. Will be getting the rest of the series though

What was one of the most memorable moments of The Magic of Recluce?

The first sound effect!

What did you like about the performance? What did you dislike?

Well read - All the sound effects

If you made a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?

??

Any additional comments?

The plot is standard fair but well written with the main character and plot good enough to keep me listening at every available opportunity. The only annoying part of the book is the sound effects, bad enough to read but cringe worthy to listen to the poor narrator trying to reproduce them. Would have been better off without them & letting the reader use their imagination.

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