Sub-Majer’s Challenge (The Saga Of The Recluce book 26) by L.E. Modesitt, Jr. (book review)
How can an honest army officer stop rival nations raiding and invading his country when he’s hampered by penny-pinching and supply shortages from headquarters because certain factions in the capital city have their own agenda? Furthermore, how can he do it without endangering his own men and dying himself? That’s the ‘Sub-Majer’s Challenge’.
The Sub-Majer is Aliyiakal, whose adventures began in ‘From The Forest’, where he started his military career in the Mirror Lancers, the armed forces of Cyador. His troubles continued in ‘Overcaptain’, at the end of which he was promoted to Sub-Majer after some success against local bandits and the forces of Duke Taartyn of Cerlyn. He wins a major battle in the early stages of this book and is promoted to Majer, so the title is misleading as he’s only a challenged Sub-Majer for the first 35 pages. After that, he’s a challenged Majer. Never mind. His reward for success is to be given command of Pemedra, another dangerous border post near Cerlyn, where he has served before but wasn’t in charge.
After a short leave, another romantic interlude with his beloved Saelora, a lady Merchanter, he heads off to the new job. On the way there, he’s told that Mirror Lancers will have to make do with fewer fire lances, their main weapon, as the chaos to charge them is in short supply. They must also try to get their food more cheaply from local suppliers and buy their own wine. Annoying. It’s almost as if someone back in the capital, Cyad, doesn’t want the Mirror Lancers to be too effective against Cerlyn, which supplies copper to Cyador. Could Merchanters profiting from the copper trade put their own profits above the interests of the country? Surely not! The next quarter of the book concerns Alyiakal’s battles against enemy forces. There will be few surprises for Modesitt fans in what follows.
In ‘Overcaptain’, some soldiers and even his girlfriend were shocked by how ruthlessly Alyiakal dealt out death and referred to him as cold-blooded. His view is that if it’s kill or be killed, he’ll kill. As he gets older, however, he suffers more from guilty nightmares about some past events, which makes him a more sympathetic character.
It’s solid fictional fare, as usual and perhaps the most realistic fantasy out there. Aliyiakal is a soldier in an organised army with superiors he has to obey, not a free agent. Furthermore, the life of an officer consists of routine things like maps, logistics, training the troops and writing reports to headquarters, much of which is sufficiently interesting for the reader. Of course, there is magic, too, in his use of order and chaos. The Accursed Forest, a feature of the first book, but not so much since, also plays a bigger part in this story. It is sentient in some way and can communicate by putting images into the minds of humans able to receive them. Alyiakal gets news belatedly from Adayal, a lady from the forest that he knew once, in the biblical sense.
Incidentally, part of the summary on the inside flap of the hardcover edition is wrong. It says, ‘He takes leave only to discover his courtship of Saelora is opposed by her mother.’ No, it isn’t. She wasn’t keen before but looks on him more favourably now. I’ve no idea how this misinformation got there, but you can ignore it.
As an individual book, the novel is oddly structured because the climax, in military terms, happens about halfway through. The rest is concerned with our hero’s personal life and preparing the way for his next posting and the next book, ‘The Last Of The First’, which is scheduled for a June 2026 release. Of course, ‘Sub-Majer’s Challenge’ is not an individual book but part of a series and the structure is shaped for that. In fact, I read on the author’s website that he planned this as three books but TOR resisted having 750-page hardbacks and split the story into four. I enjoyed ‘Sub-Majer’s Challenge’ more than ‘Overcaptain’, which was still pretty good and I look forward to the conclusion of the series.
‘Overcaptain’ was dedicated to L. E. Modesitt’s mother, Nancy Evans Modesitt (1920-2022). The author himself is 82 now but clearly has good genes to go with his solid work ethic and, hopefully, will continue to provide us with novels for a few more years to come.
Eamonn Murphy
November 2025
(pub: TOR, 2025. 438 page hardback. Price: $30.99 (US), $42.99 (CAN). ISBN: 978-1-250-32662-9. Ebook Price: £11.99 (UK))
check out websites: www.tor.com and www.lemodesittjr.com
