Imager - The First Book of the Imager Portfolio

Imager’s Challenge takes up immediately after the conclusion of Imager. Still recovering from injuries received in foiling the plots of the Ferran envoy, Rhenn is preparing to take up his new duties as imager liaison to the Civic Patrol of L’Excelsis. No sooner has he assumed his new position than he discovers two things. First, the Commander of the Civic Patrol doesn’t want a liaison from the infamous Collegium, and soon has Rhenn patrolling the streets of the worst district in the city. Second, Rhenn receives formal notice that one of the High Holders, the father of a man Rhenn partly blinded in self-defense, has declared his intention to destroy Rhenn and his family.

In Imager, the first book of the Imager Portfolio, we met Rhennthyl, an apprentice portrait artist whose life was changed by a disastrous fire. But the blaze that took his master’s life and destroyed his livelihood revealed a secret power previously dormant in Rhenn; the power of imaging, the ability to shape matter using thought. With some trouble, he adapts to the controlled life of an imager.

By Imager’s Challenge, Rhenn has become a liaison to the local law forces. He finds himself in direct conflict with both authorities and national politics as he tries to uphold the law and do his best by the people of his home city.

Now, in Imager’s Intrigue, Rhenn has come into his own. He has a wife and a young child, and a solid career as an imager. But he has made more than one enemy during his journey from apprentice painter to master imager, and even his great powers won’t allow him to escape his past.

Acclaimed author L. E. Modesitt, Jr. continues his new Recluce story in Mage-Guard of Hamor, the second of two volumes set mostly on the continent of Hamor, far across the sea from Recluce, where the story began.  

Rahl was a young apprentice on the island of Recluce sent to the mages training school for testing, then banished to Hamor.  His education now continues under dangerous circumstances.  In Hamor, his powers have increased, but so has the amount of trouble he attracts. 

The whole society of Hamor is a new culture for Modesitt—and Rahl—to explore, one in which magic is a monopoly of the state.  Rahl is a mage now, powerful and still just as dangerous to himself and to others. This is the story of how he gains both more knowledge and power, and more self-control.