Legalist

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 a simple legal specialist in water rights could get himself killed.