A world on the cusp of a new age… 
The young nation of Fatrasta is a turbulent place — a frontier destination for criminals, fortune-hunters, brave settlers, and sorcerers seeking relics of the past. Only the iron will of the lady chancellor and her secret police holds the capital city of Landfall together against the unrest of an oppressed population and the machinations of powerful empires. 

Sedition is a dangerous word… 
The insurrection that threatens Landfall must be purged with guile and force, a task which falls on the shoulders of a spy named Michel Bravis, convicted war hero Mad Ben Styke, and Lady Vlora Flint, a mercenary general with a past as turbulent as Landfall’s present. 

The past haunts us all… 
As loyalties are tested, revealed, and destroyed, a grim specter as old as time has been unearthed in this wild land, and the people of Landfall will soon discover that rebellion is the least of their worries.

The Powder Mage trilogy by Brian McClellan is without a doubt one of my most favorite trilogies OF EVER! It was my first-ever experience with flintlock fantasy, and I was instantly hooked by the way McClellan blended magic & gunpowder. The world he created in that trilogy was incredibly visceral & unique, and I just geeked out over all the detail given to things like weaponry & uniforms. I also grew to love so many of the characters in those books! And while I’m still sitting on a stack of unread Powder Mage novellas, I finally couldn’t resist diving back into this world with Sins of Empire, the first book in Gods of Blood and Powder!!

So…this is one of those books, kinda like Joe Abercrombie’s latest, A Little Hatred. New trilogy, existing fantasy world. In both instances, you could choose to start there. But it’s certainly not what I would recommend. That being said, this review will likely contain some spoilers for the Powder Mage trilogy…you’ve been warned!!

First of all, it just felt fucking amazing jumping back into this world…like putting on a favorite hoodie on the first cold fall day. This series picks up around ten years (I think) after the events of The Autumn Republic.

This story is set in the nation of Fatrasta, primarily in & around the city of Landfall. There’s three main POVs in Sins of Empire:

-Lady Vlora Flint, who we know from the Powder Mage trilogy. She’s now leading a band of mercenaries called The Riflejacks. Vlora was a character that (I think) initially suffered from a lack of “screen time” in the Powder Mage trilogy, though we got to know her better & better as the books went along. I’m fucking THRILLED that she’s one of the main characters in this series!

-Michel Bravis, a spy with the Blackhats, Lady Chancellor’s secret police. Michel was instantly fascinating to me, having full-on Gollum-style conversations with himself.

-Benjamin Styke, better known as Mad Ben Styke, former leader of the Mad Lancers, now a convicted war criminal serving time. I know Styke appears in some of the novellas, but like I mentioned, I haven’t read them yet. I think Styke is one of McClellan’s greatest creations. There was just something about him I took to straight away…this massive mountain of a guy…war hero…damaged, violent, seemingly unkillable. And yet while in prison, he looks after a young girl named Celine whose father died.

These three POVs weave in & out of each other as the book progresses. Vlora & her Riflejacks have been hired to put down a rebellion in a dangerous part of the city known as the Greenfire Depths. Learning who to trust in this city proves to be one of Vlora’s bigger challenges!

This book…is massive in scope, and I’m gonna skip trying to unpack the plot any further. There’s a lot going on here, but it all feels nicely tethered by just having three POVs. This book feels much more character focused than anything…I don’t know if that was an intentional choice, or if McClellan was thinking folks coming into this book would already have a good handle on how magic works in this world. Either way, I dug that aspect of Sins of Empire. There was much less time focused on say, what & how a powder mage can do what they do. It’s just really well incorporated into the story.

What I’m struggling to say is, I fucking loved this book. Seeing Vlora & Olem was like seeing old friends. The mannerisms that McClellan gives these characters make them jump off the page….Olem’s profound love for smoking, for instance. And the trust & openness between Vlora & Olem is incredible. Like, I was honestly so happy knowing these two were still together!!

Sins of Empire had everything I had come to expect from this world…powder mages magically changing the trajectory of bullets, some truly spectacular battle scenes, and the ever-present notion of gods walking the earth. But this book had so much more to offer as well…new characters to fall in love with, some familiar faces with new stories to tell, and a fresh setting for the story. McClellan is a meticulous world-builder, and can describe a scene so vivid, you’d swear you could smell the gunpowder. I knew right away reading Promise of Blood that I was going to adore the Powder Mage trilogy, and that feeling is just as strong starting Gods of Blood and Powder. This is an absolutely brilliant start to a trilogy!