Nah, I haven't seen him write the sound effects much. Not since I read his old science fiction. The main thing that bugs me with his writing is that he uses contractions in very awkward places making it harder to read. You have to stop, make sure the word is saying what it's supposed to, and then continue reading. Really breaks any kind of immersion you could have. As for characters they might be more on the bland side compared to recluse but I'm not sure as I haven't read recluse in a while. Same for everything else.
On the whole, Modesitt's writing has never been very good, to the point of being quite bad at points as you've said, but I think that the Imager books escaped a lot of that.
To get the thread back on topic I checked out Gardens of the Moon and Hidden Empire (Kevin J. Anderson, not Card) from the library today.