The Parafaith War and Paragenres

(Review by Rupert Neethling, Cape Town, South Africa)

L.E. Modesitt, Jr. produces the goods in abundance. But -- and here is the sign of his skill -- it rarely shows on the surface of his writing. It would be more correct to say that this remarkable Utah author produces the goods in depth. It is thus in keeping with his style that The Parafaith War delves deep beneath the self-justifying veneers of two societies that believe rigidly in their own moral superiority.

If you’re familiar with Modesitt, chances are you’ve read one or more of his ground-breaking Recluce novels. Not quite fantasy, not quite SF, perhaps not even science fantasy, although this depends on how you define these subgenres. The point is that he has something important to say that does not seem to want to be constrained by genre at all -- except if there actually is a genre called techno-magical-
ethical-religio-political realism. In his Recluce novels, all of the above apply at one point or another; and, as is his wont, he examines them in depth.

In very general terms, though, Modesitt’s Recluce universe is concerned with people who apply the forces of order and chaos through magic, and who discover that "good" and "evil" have to do with the consequences of your actions, not your ideological alignment.

What applies to the universe of Recluce applies equally to that of the The Parafaith War. Ostensibly it’s SF. Outstanding SF. But, as you may have guessed, it’s more than that. In this novel you have an ongoing confrontation between two human sides (with an inscrutable alien species playing the middle entity): the ecological ideologues and the religious ideologues. And for reasons that will be familiar to any fundamentalist, they are hell-bent on wiping each other out. In my view the real achievement of this novel is that it actually offers a solution.

You will learn from The Parafaith War. It may even change the way you think about things.
Read it and reap.

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