Legalist (The Grand Illusion #4) by L.E. Modesitt Jr. Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: fantasy, gaslamp, steampunk
Series: Grand Illusion #4
Pages: 576
Published by Tor Books on October 7, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads
L. E. Modesitt, Jr., bestselling author of Saga of Recluce and the Imager Portfolio, continues the Grand Illusion, a gaslamp political fantasy series (Isolate, Councilor, Contrarian) with a prequel, Legalist.
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.
Amid a time of a crumbling imperial line, Dominic must build a coalition within the Council and quietly draft a new constitution to save the Imperium from itself. Uncovering rampant corruption, graft, and potential to be arrested for treason, Ysella discovers any number of ways that simple legal specialist in water rights could get himself killed.
My Review:
Looking back at the Grand Illusion series, the very first book in the series, Isolate, was, among its many other marvelous themes and threads, a story about staging a mostly non-violent political coup from the inside. Following with Councilor and Contrarian, the series continues to explore what happens AFTER the balance of power has shifted as certain people attempt to shift it back to where THEY believe it belongs. With them, of course.
Whether that’s good for the rest of the country – or not.
This fourth book in the series takes a step back from those first three books and literally kicks the story back more than 400 years, but to a similar conflict. One that creates the possibility that occurs in the series’ ‘present’ in Isolate. A situation that is, come to think of it, is predicted late in THIS book, Legalist.
The ‘grand illusion’ of the series’ title is the illusion that government can make EVERYTHING better for EVERYONE at the same time. An idea that is so illusory it might as well be a mirror image of the famous line that goes, “You can please all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you cannot please all of the people all of the time.” (The quote is often attributed to Abraham Lincoln, but may have originated with P.T. Barnum substituting “fool” for “please” – and doesn’t that fit all too well!)
However, just because many people either see government as utterly useless OR expect it to solve all their problems – and sometimes both contradictory thoughts at the same time – that doesn’t mean that government – or at least people in government – are completely ineffective at helping the people they claim to serve.
And it certainly – and unfortunately – doesn’t mean that they are not absolutely capable of harming the people they serve.
It sounds as if I’m talking about now, doesn’t it? And I am, but only in the sense that the grand illusion of what government can and cannot do is fairly universal.
The story in Legalist is about a crisis in government and about a change in the form of that government in the hopes of making that crisis a bit less, well, terrible. Because humans are gonna human, and that’s true on all sides of the equation.
So the story focuses on one single member of the Council of Guldor, water legalist Dominic Mikhail Ysella – not coincidentally the ancestor of one of the primary characters in Isolate. Ysella sees the current crisis coming from miles away – and so do many of his fellow councilors.
The Imperador, the man who brought the country together and held it together, is dying. His virtually unlimited power is about to pass to his remaining son, a man who enjoys wielding unlimited power and is not at all tempered in that wielding by experience, intelligence or anything even vaguely resembling a moral compass.
Under the Heir, Guldor will become the kind of tyranny that incites rebellions – until the country breaks apart in civil war. The current Imperador may have unlimited power, but he still has the sense not to rule in such a manner as to drive the entire country into revolt. His son will have all of that power but nothing to temper it and no desire to even try.
However, the country that the Imperador created does have a founding document that outlines who has what powers AND provides a method for altering that power. The trick – and it’s going to be a trick and a half – is to get the Imperador to agree to curtailing his own power.
Or to retain his own power while limiting the powers of all who will come after him, knowing that it will happen much sooner than anyone would prefer. Change is coming, whether anyone likes it or not. The question before the Imperador, the Council, and especially Councilor Ysella, is whether this is a chance to turn that change from the unquestionable terrors of tyranny to the questionable future of a constitutional monarchy.
And who will survive the turmoil that will inevitably go into making it happen.
Escape Rating A+: This series is reading catnip for me, but I also think it’s a bit of an acquired taste – just that I’ve fully acquired it.
For one thing, all of Modesitt’s series are the ultimate in competence porn. Just like the protagonist of the Imager Portfolio, Dominic Ysella is simply damn good at his job – and he’s a decent human being as well. He doesn’t rely on luck or connections, just training and education and hard work and doing the right thing instead of the easy. He sees opportunities and he seizes them, but he also knows when to temper his own impulses.
And we see this world through his eyes as he does his best and damndest to make his country a better place than he found it.
From one perspective, it’s all about meetings and documents and political machinations – and on the other hand, it’s about not just being in the room where it happens, but making the moves needed to become the person who creates the situation that opens the room FOR it to happen.
This story could have been a bit dull – but it never is. Instead, as we follow along, we get deeper into the situation that Ysella finds himself in, we see the rock hemming him into the hard place – and watch as he opens up an unexpected space between the two so he has room to maneuver – and to make a difference.
And the story IS exciting. He’s constantly under threat of assassination, whether merely a character assassination or a bloody one. He knows he has enemies on all sides, as well as friends. He’s caught in the midst of secret work that will save his country and himself – but only if he can prevent it from a too early reveal that will inevitably lead to a charge of treason.
Ysella often feels as though he’s dancing one step forward and two steps back, on a tightrope, with no net, in the dark. We watch to see if he’ll fall even as we hope he’ll succeed.
Obviously, I loved this one, as I have the entire rest of the series. Due to this entry being a prequel to the rest, it would be possible for someone to start with Legalist, decide if this is a taste they’d like to acquire, and if it turns out to be so then going back to Isolate and reading the rest.
But speaking of the rest of the series, the author has announced that he has turned in the manuscript for what he says will likely be the last book of the Grand Illusion series, which will return to the main line of the series and take place after Contrarian. The publication date has not yet been set, however, the title of that final book will be Premier, as I predicted when I finished Contrarian. So I’m a bit chuffed about that even though I’m going to have to impatiently wait at least a year to read it.
