The Grand Illusion

L. E. Modesitt, Jr., bestselling author of The Mongrel Mage, has a brand new gaslamp political fantasy Isolate. Industrialization. Social unrest. Underground movements. Government corruption and surveillance. Something is about to give. Steffan Dekkard is an isolate, one of the small percentage...

L. E. Modesitt, Jr., bestselling author of Saga of Recluce and the Imager Portfolio, continues his brand new, gaslamp, political fantasy series with Councilor, the thrilling sequel to Isolate. Welcome to the Grand Illusion. Continued poor harvests and steam-powered industrialization displace and...

In Contrarian, protests against unemployment and poor harvests have become armed riots as the people sink deeper into poverty. They look to a government struggling to emerge from corruption and conspiracy. Recently elected to the Council of Sixty-Six, Steffan Dekkard is the first Councilor who is an Isolate, a man invulnerable to the emotional manipulations and emotional surveillance of empaths—but not the recent bombing of the Council Office Building by insurrectionists.

Fifty years after the establishment of the Imperium, and 450 years before the events of Isolate, Dominic Mikail Ysella—ancestor of Avraal Ysella—is the grandson of the last king of Aloor. Stripped of most of their land, Dominic, as the third son, must support himself. Dominic becomes a legalist and is elected to the Imperial Council quietly working as an isolate, someone unreadable by government telepaths.