Imager

The First Book of the Imager Portfolio

By: L. E. Modesitt Jr.

Narrated by: William Dufris

Length: 17 hrs and 54 mins

Publisher's summary

Although Rhennthyl is the son of a leading wool merchant in L'Excelsis, the capital of Solidar, the most powerful nation on Terahnar, he has spent years becoming a journeyman artist and is skilled and diligent enough to be considered for the status of master artisan - in another two years.

Then, in a single moment, his entire life is transformed when his master patron is killed in a flash fire and Rhenn discovers he is an imager - one of the few in the entire world of Terahnar who can visualize things and make them real.

Rhenn is forced to leave his family and join the Collegium of Imagisle. Because of their abilities (they can do accidental magic even while asleep), and because they are both feared and vulnerable, imagers must live separately from the rest of society.

In this new life, Rhenn discovers that all too many of the "truths" he knew were nothing of the sort. Every day brings a new threat to his life. He makes a powerful enemy while righting a wrong, and he begins to learn to do magic in secret.

Imager is the innovative and enchanting opening of an involving new fantasy story.

©2009 L.E. Modesitt, Jr. (P)2009 Tantor

so many details and that voice . . .

It’s a shame this book wasn’t better than it was because the author has obviously put some time into creating a new and interesting world. There are plenty of new words, lands and concept as well as a fully worked out society with all of its professional and social classes. However, I miss having a nice visceral response to the world and the characters and this is ironic considering the amount of detail that is included. We are constantly being informed as to what clothing is being worn and what characters are eating (to the nth detail I mean). In fact, many times I found myself wanting more action and suspense and much less mundane and what really are trivial details. Also, with a much detail that was included, there was very little said about the causes and inner workings of the “imagining” phenomena. This comes after having finished the Harry Dresden series where magic is very well explained.

One point is for certain. The narrator/performer was very poor in my opinion. He is very limited in the number of voices he has available and those he does have become nearly unbearable with time. Whether it is his drunken John Wayne voice, his drunken Elvis voice or, worse of all, his Napoleon Dynamite voice I found myself very close to turning the book off despite the credit I spent on it. Maybe if the dialogue was more organic and real sounding (not one swear work, not even in the story’s lexicon) and maybe if there was a different narrator I would have enjoyed this one much more. I do not plan on continuing the series.

Good potential

This book had some interesting concepts. The magical ability’s come in the form of imaging this is where the Imager imagines an item in his mind and then it happens in the real world. This ability is not limited to items or just mere physical objects but can be applied to people. This is a world building book so it has a lot of detail about the world this book is taking place in, the people, how magic works, the different factions, and the relationships among people. This process was slow at parts, too much detail about mundane activity’s that had nothing to do with the progression of the story. Overall not bad, I would give this 3 ½ stars.

A long, but good listen

Pretty good book. It was an adequate world with two moons, magic, varying religions, races, cultures and politics. I always wonder when I finish long books if it needed to be such along book? It was interesting to get into the life, daily thoughts and minutia of an imagers life . Yet, I feel it could easily have been an eight to ten hour book. I'm still off to buy the next one, I still think this one is worth a credit.

a political book

was so disappointed listen to part 1 and 2 just waiting for the dialogue to end and the story to begin but there is so much political stuff going on Im not sure what the author was thinking I'm mean his character has the ability to imagine anything into existence yet he spends more time telling us about the economy and political process of the town.

Narrator has good voice and your able to distinguish between characters.

Not too bad

The story is OK. The narration is a bit irritating.
I don't care for the narrator's rendition of the various characters.

Was not that entertained

The concept of the story seemed intriguing, and some parts of the story were entertaining, but the majority of the story was boring. I felt like I was back in school and learning all kinds of boring historical facts. The interesting parts were the character relationships. The narrator did not do a great job of differentiating characters. There were many times that I could not tell the voice of one character from another. But the narrator did have a pleasant, entertaining narrative. I won't be listening to the sequels.

Buy the paper version.

Book is decent without this narration. Nine more words are needed for this review post.

Pleased, very pleased.

the book started out slow, as many have mentioned. however, i enjoyed being slowly immersed into the world this story takes place in and to the characters themselves.

once the introduction fades away and the story really takes off any amount of perseverance one puts into getting through the introduction pays off in a big way.

i am waiting very impatiently for the next installment of this tale to surface. i would highly recommend this book to any fantasy fans out there as a rare gem.

The Last third almost makes it worth it

I found it to be a good story, overall, but for me, there were a few major problems. The first of which was how nonchalantly the main character, Rhennthyl, who grew up in an upper-class, family with a peaceful lifestyle could so easily kill without much in the way of guilt and remorse. Even after our hero discovers his imager power and goes on to be trained by master imagers, he was never given anything but defensive training, yet he instinctively murders his attackers in very painful ways without a second of hesitation. Eventually, after he is to be trained as a master spy, there is a point in the story where Rhennthyl actually does get training in killing by practicing on death row criminals. This then is where Modesitt's character decides to have a problem with killing, but only after a one of the death row victims turns out to be a woman. I found Rhennthyl's ease at brutally killing his attackers to be inconsistent with his lifestyle and upbringing . If he had grown up on the streets and routinely fought to survive or even perhaps had been a soldier, I would have found it more believable. Also, the first two thirds of the book is very slow. I have to give Modesitt's writing all the credit for keeping me hanging in there until things finally got moving in the last third of the story. Frankly, I found the immense amount of set up and all the political lessons we as the listener/reader had to endure were just not needed. What do editors do now a days? I would have liked a little more attention paid to the world in which Rhennthyl lived. Until he was shot, I had been thinking of the fantasy world as something akin to medieval times. The use of a sniper's rifle made me have to rethink exactly what type of time period to mentally place the story. I think the Author should have established that for me. All in all, I would give the next Imager story a try, but it needs to hit a home run for me to read anymore after that.

An adequate book, with adequate production.

This audiobook was the epitome of an "adequate" fantasy. It hold my attention just enough to ensure that I finished it, but not enough to leave any lasting impression. There were some quaint ideas in here, but not too much as to be outright original.

In addition the production was similarly "OK". The reader, while not suited to the role, made a good attempt. However I feel that he gave many of the characters a strange tone at odds with what they are saying. Again its a matter of it being "good enough".

2.5/5 across the board.