/lit/ - Literature

>>20284516
Princeps, Imager Portfolio #5 - L.E. Modesitt Jr. (2012)

The following is filled with structural spoilers to help you understand whether it's something you'd want to read. With this kind of story, the concept and the details thereof seem to matter much more than anything else.

The first 15% or so is Quaeryt becoming accustomed to being the Princeps and newly married. The marriage is awkward throughout the book, but that's to be expected since his lord showed up unannounced one day and presented his teenage (19/20) sister to him (29/30) as his wife. Vaelora, his new wife, agreed to this because her grandmother had a vision and told her as a child that she would.

The next 60% or so is Quaeryt's day to day life working on his next assigned project, rebuilding and setting to order a town partially destroyed by pyroclastic flow from a recent volcanic eruption. It's wasn't quite how I wanted it to be, though I don't know what that would be, but I found it quite nice anyway. He personally fills a surprising number of roles until he can find someone more suited for them. He's the governor, civil patroller (police), justicer (judge), chorister (priest), and whatever other role is required. He really just does everything. There can be no doubt that this is competence porn. Sometimes there are still problems that the law is unable or unwilling to address that need to be resolved. Quaeryt solves all of those thorny issues the only way he seems to know how, assassinations. He briefly wonders whether doing so is sustainable and the ethics of the matter.

The last 25% or is military action where Quaeryt is assigned to quickly train a squad of imagers to cause as much devastation as possible to the enemy forces. Considering how successful he is with that, I have to wonder just how much outright slaughter there will be in the following books.

Rating: 4/5