Showing results by author "L. E. Modesitt, Jr." in All Categories

A bloody coup has made Mykella, the Lord-Protector's daughter, ruler of her land, but it has also left her and her two sisters bereft of family and uncertain of their friends. Worse, their country is almost destitute, and there are rumblings of war along the borders.

Mykella, the eldest daughter of the Lord-Protector of Lanachrona, discovers that someone is diverting significant sums of money from her father's treasury. Soon, a series of fatal and near fatal accidents occur with members of her family and trusted retainers. Then there are attempts to remove Mykella and her sisters from the capital by marrying them off.

A military science-fiction adventure from L. E. Modesitt, author of the best-selling Saga of Recluce series, set in the universe of The Parafaith War. The Ethos Effect combines hard science-fiction adventure with an insightful examination of the relationship between the sacred and the secular.

The deadly White Wizards of Fairhaven, wielding the forces of chaos, threaten the ancient matriarchy of Sarronnyn, the last bastion of order in Candar. When Sarronnyn falls despite the assistance of the Black Order mages, Justen, a young Black Engineer, must escape the city and master forbidden technology that harness chaos itself. Even so, it may not be enough to halt conquest of the White Wizards.

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.

In the far future among the colonized worlds of the galaxy, there's a war going on between the majority of civilized worlds and a colonial theocracy. Trystin Desoll grows up fighting against religious fanatics and becomes a hero, a first-class pilot, then, amazingly, a spy. What do you do if you're a relatively humane soldier fighting millions of suicidal volunteers on the other side who know that they are utterly right, and you are utterly wrong, with no middle ground? Trystin Desoll has an idea.

Five thousand years in the future, humankind has spread across thousands of worlds, and more than a dozen different governments exist in an uneasy truce. But human beings have found no signs of other life anywhere approaching human intelligence. This changes when scientists discover a sunless planet they name Danann, traveling the void just beyond the edge of the galaxy at such a high speed that it cannot be natural. Its continents and oceans have been sculpted and shaped, with but a single megaplex upon it - close to perfectly preserved.

In Earth's distant future, Tyndel is both teacher and mentor, a staunch devotee to his conservative and rigidly structured religious culture. Then a rogue infection of nanotechnology transforms him into a "demon", something more than human, and he is forced into exile, fleeing to the more technologically advanced space-faring civilization that lies to the north, one that his own righteous people consider evil. Although shaken by his transformation, he has the rare talent required to become a space pilot.

Young Lerris yearns to find a place in the world better suited to his skills and temperament. In Recluce, this means taking one of two options: permanent exile from Recluce or the dangergeld, a complex, rule-laden wanderjahr in the lands beyond. Many do not survive. Lerris chooses dangergeld. Lerris will need magic in the lands beyond, where the power of the Chaos Wizards reigns unchecked, and he must learn to use his powers in an orderly way before his wanderjahr, or fall prey to Chaos.

What lies beneath the millions of orbiting nanotech satellites that shroud the world called Haze? Major Keir Roget's mission is to make planetfall in secret, find out, and report back to his superiors in the Federation, the Chinese-dominated government that rules Earth and the colonized planets. For all his effectiveness as a security agent, Roget is troubled by memories of an earlier mission.

A brilliant scientist on the planet Devanta has created a small universe contiguous to ours - and a utopian city on one of the planets. The question becomes, though, an utopia for whom? And why is a shady entertainment mogul subsidizing the scientist? More critical than that, does this new universe require the destruction of a portion - or all - of our universe in order to grow and stabilize?

In the twenty-fourth century, Earth is vastly changed. Ecological and biological catastrophe have raged across the planet, but for the survivors, it is a world of plenty. Even the poorest live in abundance, and the upper class—the ascendant—command technological marvels.

Rather than accepting a marriage arranged by his mother, the powerful military matriarch of Westwind, Creslin chooses exile, setting out to find his own identity and developing his magical talents through conflict with the enigmatic white wizards of Candar. What Creslin doesn't know he stands in the way of their plot to subjugate the world.

In the far future, an indestructible and massive canal more than 2,000 miles long spans the mid-continent of Earth. Nothing can mar it, move it, or affect it in any fashion. At its western end, where it meets the sea, is an equally indestructible structure comprising three levels of seemingly empty chambers. Scientists from three different civilizations, separated in time by hundreds of thousands of years, are investigating the canal. In the most distant of these civilizations, religious rebellion is brewing.

On a world called Heaven, the 10 major religions of mankind each have its own land governed by a capital city and ruled by a Hegemon. That Hegemon may be a god, or a prophet of a god. Smaller religions have their own towns or villages of belief. Corvyn, known as the Shadow of the Raven, contains the collective memory of humanity’s Falls from Grace. With this knowledge comes enormous power. When unknown power burns a mysterious black image into the holy place of each House of the Decalivre, Corvyn must discover what entity could possibly have that much power.

Four hundred years after winning Secession from the Terran Empire, the star system Accord wants to sign a simple trade treaty on microchip export tariffs. But if the agreement is so minor, why is Professor Nathaniel Whaler-top economist at the Ecolitan Institute, and his world's top commando killer-chosen Accord's Envoy?

Nathaniel Firstborn Whaler is an Ecolitan, both a professor at the Institute and a field agent with extraordinary powers. Sent to a backwater colony planet nominally to determine its economic viability, Whaler evades an assassin's bullets only steps from the spaceport. He soon uncovers evidence that the planet will become the flashpoint for interstellar conflict between two empires, with each prepared to blame the Ecolitan Institute should war break out. Whaler must do everything in his power to stop what might become the worst disaster in human history.

Witchcraft and high technology coexist in a world starved of natural energy resources and forced to mine the plentiful energy emitted by the sun.

Secca, foster daughter of the Soprano Sorceress and now her successor as sorceress-protector of Defalk, must deal carefully with her willful master and wield her power to save his kingdom from the armies, fleets, and master sorcerers of the maitre of Sturinn.

In Fall of Angels, the sixth installment of the Saga of Recluce series, L. E. Modesitt, Jr., introduced the engineer/smith Nylan, the only man among the leadership of the company of "angels" marooned on a high plateau in the west of Candar, and perhaps the one person most responsible for their survival. But the angels are a matriarchal band, and so Nylan must leave his companions and seek a life elsewhere. He travels down from the plateau into the world of warring kingdoms and strange magics with his companion, Ayrlyn, the healer, and his infant son.