Imager
category: fantasy, author:
L.E. Modesitt Jr
book 1 of the Imager Portfolio
original copyright 2009
read in July 2012
Agamedes' opinion: 6 out of 10, read to pass the time
Tedious.
Exceedingly tedious.
Imager is an introduction to a series. It may be a fascinating series. As a book, this one is boring.
Young man becomes an apprentice artist. Passes ten years between chapters. Spends the rest of the book learning to be an imager, a magician.
We are given full details of every lesson. Every conversation. Every... single... boring... meal.
Half way through this book I thought, Why are we told what is eaten at every single meal? Why are we told what clothes the hero wears? What clothes his girlfriend wears? I see several possibilities.
Perhaps Modesitt is being paid by the word. Perhaps he has a well-imagined world but no plot, so he describes the world. Perhaps -- and I give this possibility the highest probability -- perhaps Modesitt has been told that lots of women are reading fantasy series. So, he thinks, Keep the women happy by detailing every meal and every costume...
Does it work? Do food and clothes attract the female reader? I don't know. Perhaps a female reader could tell me.
In between lessons and meals and descriptions of clothes, the hero is the target of assassins. As far as I can tell, there are three groups of assassins out to kill him.
One group seems to be linked to some people that the hero killed. As far as I can tell, it's not the killing which upset them. No worries, someone else has already killed that lot. Or at least scared them away.
They were scared away by the second lot. The second lot are believed to have a long-term grudge against the hero. Sometime in the future... in a far distant book, perhaps... the hero expects that this group will punish him severely. His evidence? Well, they killed the people who wanted him dead, didn't they?!
Then there's the third lot of killers... Who seem to be part of international attempts to destabilise the hero's country. This group randomly kill beginner imagers, those who don't know enough to defend themselves. When the hero proves hard to kill -- they just keep on trying!
Meanwhile, the hero is learning his magical tricks. Naturally enough, he is the best imager for hundreds of years. On top of this, he has the unexplained and unrelated Guesswork Superpower: when he guesses that the baddies are hidden behind the garden wall -- he is always right...
Okay, so it's an interesting world. The many dozens of characters are mostly cardboard. The hero is food- and clothing-fixated but otherwise acceptable. It makes for an interesting chapter one.
But a whole book? With so much scene-setting, so much explanatory conversation... so little actually happening!? No way.
Light. Wordy. Tedious.
..o0o..
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