This is Modesitt’s latest volume of the long-running Recluce series. As
often before, it’s about a person learning that they have the talent and
need to become an order-master, with all that that entails. And yet,
it’s refreshingly different. Rather than an impatient kid from Recluce,
the hero is a middle-aged cooper from Nordla. His emerging need for
order and truth brings him into dire conflict with the local ruler,
and he’s forced to flee his home. He finds employment with a sympathetic
ship’s captain of his acquaintance and travels as a ship’s carpenter
to a number of places we’ve heard of in previous books but never seen.
Everywhere he travels he learns a little more about his ever increasing
powers.

This is the first of two books about Kharl the Cooper; the second is
called Ordermaster, and I’m rather looking forward to it.