Fall of Angels

In Fall of Angels, Modesitt moves deep into Recluce's past to chronicle the founding of the Empire of the Legend, the almost mythological domain ruled by women warriors on the highland plateau of the continent of Candar. He tells the story from the point of view of Nylan, the engineer and builder whose job it is to raise a great tower on the plateau known as the Roof of the World. Here the exiled women warriors will live and survive to fulfill their destiny. Here a revolutionary new society will be born...if Nylan can get the tower built and defenses in place before the rulers of the lowland nations come with their armies to obliterate them all. And if Nylan can learn to control the magical powers that are growing within him.
Thus Modesitt relates the story of how magic comes into the world of Recluce, in a fantasy novel destined to please the growing Recluce audience and win new readers to the series.

The Gods themselves do battle in this prequel to Modesitt's popular Recluse saga. Set centuries before last year's The Death of Chaos, the story recounts a space battle in which the frigate Winterlance is blown into another universe and makes an emergency landing on a habitable planet. The castaways, mostly female space marines, initially must struggle with the harsh weather and their own failing technology in order to survive. Soon, however, they discover that they share their new world with a more intelligent enemy: other humans. The natives, whose culture is intensely patriarchal, have magical powers and are extremely hostile, especially to independent women. As Ryba and Nylan, the Winterlance's former chief officers, struggle to create both a civilization and a means to defend it, they must fight increasingly difficult battles even while coming to terms with their own awakening magical powers. Modesitt's character development is solid, and the novel makes intriguing use of technology in a fantasy setting, but the plot is predictable and the language pedestrian. A seemingly superfluous subplot concerning the chief villain's home life fails to add excitement. Fans of the series should enjoy this sixth entry, particularly for its explication of the myths and legends of latter-day Recluse, but it's not the sort of volume likely to win Modesitt a new legion of admirers.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A prequel to Modesitt's fantasy series about planet Recluce with its war between Order (black magic) and Chaos (white magic) (The Death of Chaos, 1995, etc.). Here, a spaceship full of human ``angels'' (they're involved in a dreadful war in space against ``demons'') falls into another universe and is forced to land on a high plateau, the remainder of the planet being far too hot for the angels. As they struggle to survive against hostile locals wielding baffling Chaos magic, engineer Nylan must learn to control his own growing Order magic powers. The two groups are easily distinguished. The newcomers' story is recounted in the past tense, while the locals rejoice in a present-tense narrative: just one of the eccentricities in an often intriguing if fairly predictable installment. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

The latest novel in Modesitt's Recluce series is one of the best and most accessible for readers new to the saga. It casts back in time to the founding of one of the well-established cultures of Recluce, the women warriors of Westwind. The Westwind women sprang from the mostly female crew of a crashed starship who then faced a classic situation, that of exiles from a technological culture on a pretechnological planet that holds more than a few surprises for them. Modesitt manages this version of that predicament quite well, infusing it with more action than is in most of the other Recluce yarns, as well as with a certain amount of preaching on the utility of violence. The resulting tale will hold existing series fans and probably recruit some new ones. Roland Green