History Literature / SagaOfRecluce

The Series so far:

# The Magic of Recluce (Year 2250)
# The Towers of the Sunset (Year 1300)
# The Magic Engineer (Year 1600)
# The Order War (Year 2050)
# The Death of Chaos (Year 2255)
# The Fall of Angels (Year 801)
# The Chaos Balance (Year 803)
# The White Order (Year 1590)
# Colors of Chaos (Year 1605)
# Magi'i of Cyador (Year 410)
# Scion of Cyador (Year 418)
# Wellspring of Chaos (Year 2110)
# Ordermaster (Year 2112)
# Natural Ordermage (Year 1900)
# Mage-Guard of Hamor (Year 1903)
# Arms-Commander (Year 815)
# Cyador's Heirs (Year 825)
# Heritage of Cyador (Year 833)
# The Mongrel Mage (Year 1075)
# Outcasts of Order (Year 1076)
# The Mage-Fire War (Year 1077)
# Fairhaven Rising (Year 1093)
# From the Forest (Year 92)

# The Magic of Recluce (Year 1850)
# The Towers of the Sunset (Year 900)
# The Magic Engineer (Year 1200)
# The Order War (Year 1605)
# The Death of Chaos (Year 1855)
# The Fall of Angels (Year 401)
# The Chaos Balance (Year 403)
# The White Order (Year 1190)
# Colors of Chaos (Year 1205)
# Magi'i of Cyador (Year 1)
# Scion of Cyador (Year 8)
# Wellspring of Chaos (Year 1710)
# Ordermaster (Year 1712)
# Natural Ordermage (Year 1500)
# Mage-Guard of Hamor (Year 1503)
# Arms-Commander (Year 415)
# Cyador's Heirs (Year 425)
# Heritage of Cyador (Year 433)
# The Mongrel Mage (Year 675)
# Outcasts of Order (Year 677)
# The Mage-Fire War (Year 679)
# Fairhaven Rising (Year 695)

* HeroesWantRedheads: This and FieryRedhead figure prominently throughout the series; and are repeatedly played straight, inverted, subverted, and twisted around various ways that indicate a significant AuthorAppeal.

* BelligerentSexualTension: Quite a few relationships are either this, or are hinted to be this before being subverted. The most notable straight example being Creslin and Maegera, whith Lerris and Tamra being a notable subversion.

* RecycledINSPACE: HoratioAlgerJr stories WITH MAGIC.

* TheRedMage: Some mages are capable of tapping into both order and chaos, and are called "gray" mages, or druids. They generally are more powerful than all-black or all-white. The only two white mage main characters in the novels, Lorn and Cerryl, are both actually grey - they can both wield order powers.
** The incomprehensible textbook for white mages points out that you'll just blow yourself up with pure chaos. All chaos mages use order to channel their chaos. This doesn't make them grey in the same way the druids are grey.
** Maegera is described in the books as grey, because she is able to move from using Chaos magic to using pure Order magic. Aside from the druids, the only truly grey mage is Justen. Earlier grey mages are described as "unstable", and tended to have shorter lifespans than even Chaos wizards.

** Of course, the so-called book is really just the disorganized ramblings of another exile who came home, whom they decided was a genius [[ImNotAHeroIm without his consultation]].

* RecycledINSPACE: HoratioAlger stories WITH MAGIC.

** Further, there are extremely practical reasons that certain advances we made in technology cannot be used. Firearms, for example, could be disastrous from a tactical standpoint when one relatively weak chaos user (not necessarily even powerful enough to call them a mage) could heat the gunpowder, and internal combustion engines generate raw chaos, which is much more powerful in the universe of Recluce than ours. There's a reason that most technology that actually get used requires black Order-imbued iron, and using too much of that creates Chaos concentrations elsewhere in the world. A major criticism of Recluce is that their over-concentration of Order is responsible for the constant war and other social evils of Candar.

* AnachronicOrder: If you read the books in order of their release, you'll be jumping back and forth from past, to future, and back, many times before you're done. The order above is the list by their publish dates followed by their year that the events occur InUniverse. Modesitte jumps back and forth over almost two millennia.