Madness in Solidar

2 stars, Metaphorosis reviews

Summary
Alaster, newly arrived from Westisle as the Collegium of Imagers' new Maitre, finds that he must deal with an unreasonable, egotistical Rex as well as difficult and dangerous army, Holders' Council, and factors - all of whom threaten the Collegium.

Review
In the first subseries of the Imager Portfolio, about Rhenn, Modesitt starts with an interesting new world and premise, engaging characters, and a promising storyline. That's the basis on which I bought nine other books in the series. Unfortunately, subsequent books in the subseries immediately bogged down in quotidian tedium.

The second subseries, about Quaeryt, started better – more action, more motion. Unfortunately, after a book or two, it bogged down in repetitive vague philosophy and repetitive gestures at relationships.

In this third subseries, about Alastar, Modesitt skips the introductory honeymoon period and goes straight to the bog of quotidian tedium mixed with repetitive vague philosophy, with a soupcon of relationship gestures to subtract spice. I found myself bored by chapter three (of over forty). This is a book, from the get-go, about political maneuvering, which follows the now-familiar Imager pattern of whining about other people followed by a simplistic solution of using magic to kill everyone.

It really is simplistic. For one, the king (‘Rex') appears to have absolutely no staff of his own to run a huge kingdom. He relies entirely on imagers that he has up to now ignored, but who suddenly become responsible for taxes, infrastructure, military strategy, budgeting, etc. His actions – and those of most key actors – are far from credible. At the same time, every one of them has the same basic plan – kill all opponents so that their successors will obey. That's evil – unless, of course, imagers do it, in which case it was forced on them by circumstances and the only possible solution. Protagonist Alastar nominally engages in a lot of self-reflection, but, when lightly challenged even by other imagers, refuses to budge a millimeter from his positions. He does, though, spend a lot of time explaining things that no one has asked about – especially if it's repetitive.

As a person with some knowledge of governance, the governance aspects of this world are especially troubling. Not only is there no bureaucracy to speak of, there's a lack of basic understanding. A key element of the story is setting tariffs – raising the percentage paid to the rex. This is explicitly described as a percentage – yet the argument is that, because there's not enough revenue, the tariff must rise – and continue to rise in years to come. It may be, of course, that the rate is too low. And it may be that the absolute revenue should rise in years to come. But the rate shouldn't constantly rise – eventually it would reach 100% and be ludicrous. This may seem like a petty point – but it's the linchpin around which the story is built, and it's arguably wrong.

There are all sorts of other flaws in the story – the Collegium of imagers is constantly under threat, yet not once does its leader think to send a message to the Collegium's other main location, from which he himself came. But in addition to these flaws, there's disappointment. The first two subseries are, in part, about discovering what magic can do. Here, we have imagers discovering the very same things – for the third time. While Modesitt posits that Quaeryt deliberately let some things slip from public knowledge, Alastar spends a lot of the book thinking about why (which was thoroughly explained in the previous subseries, and repeated at length here). A journal from Quaeryt's time replaces the book about Rholan as a source for vague philosophy for characters to quote and discuss. Very little of it is interesting, especially because the solutions they arrive at are always the same – ‘shame we had to kill all those people, but they deserved it'.