Description:

From Publishers Weekly

The prolific Modesitt's 12th Recluce fantasy, his first since 2001's Scion of Cyador, delights from start to finish. In the city of Brysta on the island of Nordla, Kharl, a cooper, has a prosperous business and a loving, if not perfect, family. He's also a man who can't help doing right, no matter the cost to himself. He soon pays a heavy price for twice offending the local lord's dastardly son by his good deeds: first, he rescues a neighbor's daughter from two upper-class louts trying to rape her; second, he saves the life of Jenevra, a Recluce blackstaffer (or mage), after she's attacked and left in the street to die. When someone later cuts Jenevra's throat, Kharl is arrested for the crime, but at the trial he can only watch as the local lord arranges to have the cooper's wife hanged for a murder neither of them committed. Hounded from the only home he's known, Kharl ends up on the run with only a few coins to his name—and Jenevra's staff and book. Kharl's slow transformation from family man to lonely wanderer, from solid citizen to wanted outlaw, from simple right-thinking craftsman to fledgling order-master and wizard, makes for a relentless and absorbing story. In a genre saturated with callow youngsters who grow into heroes, Modesitt effortlessly builds an epic adventure around an ordinary, middle-aged man. This marks a welcome new chapter in the Recluce saga, with the ending all but promising a sequel.
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From Booklist

Modesitt returns to the world of Recluce. Kharl is the best cooper in Brysta, one of the cities of Nordla, and except for his adolescent sons, leads a life as reliable as one of his barrels. His troubles start when he rescues his neighbor's daughter from assault and then helps a young rape victim from Recluce. His consort is unhappy about the latter--premonitorily, for when the young woman is mysteriously killed in the cooperage, Kharl is arrested, tried, and flogged, but his consort is hanged for murder, which she didn't commit. The corrupt son of the local lord is to blame for that injustice, which shortly precipitates Kharl's loss of the cooperage and flight for his life, as well, accoutred with the murdered woman's black staff and her copy of The Basis of Order. Modesitt's excellent new story has thought-provoking underpinnings that will snare newcomers as well as old Recluce hands, who will slot it into Recluce chronology some 60 years after the fall of Fair(ha)ven. Frieda Murray
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