Sins of Empire

Executive Summary: An excellent start to a new trilogy in Brian McClellan's Power Mage series. This one is a lot more political than the previous series was, which may be why I think this may be his best book yet.Audiobook: I got [b:Promise of Blood 15790883 Promise of Blood (Powder Mage, #1) Brian McClellan http://images.gr-assets.com/books/1350337505s/15790883.jpg 21512438] in ebook for cheap, so I stuck to that format for the rest of the series. Now I wish I had gone audiobook instead. Christian Rodska is absolutely fantastic. He doesn't attempt to do any feminine voices, which is probably a smart move on his part, but his male voices are all fantastic. I especially like the voice he used for Ben Styke.Full ReviewI hesitated for about half a second on giving this 4.5 stars instead of 5, but then I remembered how I spent like 10 minutes staring at a wall to get in “just one more chapter”. The books you hate to put down and look forward to picking up, are always the deciding factor for me between 4 and 5 stars.If I had one complaint about the original Powder Mage series, it was that the rather intriguing female characters were mostly relegated to supporting cast. This was especially true for Vlora Flint.This book picks up about 10 years after the events of [b:The Autumn Republic 20883847 The Autumn Republic (Powder Mage, #3) Brian McClellan http://images.gr-assets.com/books/1393261950s/20883847.jpg 40224712], and finds Vlora and many of her countryman working as mercenaries for the nation of Fatrasta. I was really happy to see Olem again. He was one of my favorites of the original series.I haven't read any of the shorter works set in this world, but this book finally gave Vlora some character development I would have liked to see in the last series. In addition to Vlora we're introduced to two new characters who are both natives of Fatrasta. The first Michel Bravis works as a spy for the secret police. He did not start off very likable to me, though his story was always interesting.Ben Styke on the other hand was instantly a favorite, albeit a bit of a trope with the grizzled war hero/turned anti-hero. I thought all three stories started out immediately interesting and converged quite nicely by the end of this book.I personally don't enjoy military fiction as much as I do political fiction. There was certainly a lot of politics in the original series, but it definitely felt more like an action/military series more than anything. There was a ton of action with the occasional political intrigue mixed in to move the action along.This book seemed to be the opposite. Much of it was heavy on the politics of Fatrasta, and the role of our three POVs within it. But fear not, the excellent action/battle scenes of the previous series are still quite present, albeit to a lesser degree in the previous series.I'll be curious to see if that trend keeps up with the next book, or if he'll be ratcheting up the action once again. Either way, I'm very eager to get my hands on it. Brian McClellan has quickly become one of my favorite authors, and this book did not disappoint.