Wrath of Empire

I originally used Promise of Blood as a palette cleanser after I had finished off Deadhouse Gates in my Malazan read through, needing something that wasn't anywhere nearly as grim and heartbreaking. I ended up reading reading through all of the Powder Mage series back to back over the course of a week or two. A story steeped in military-heavy flintlock fantasy, Wrath of Empire offers more of the breakneck, no-nonsense pace that Brian McClellan has gotten me to know and love in his novels.

Wrath, the second book in the sequel series, Gods of Blood and Powder, picks up not long after where we left off in Sins, with several of our protagonists starting the search for the two remaining godstones, after having left the one they found in Dynize hands (with a little help from Ka-Poel to stall them before they can use it). Their aim being to prevent either the Dynize or Lindet from getting their hands on the stones and bringing a new god into the world. We're treated to a small prologue to kick things off, showing six dragonmen being released by Ka-Sedial, voice of the Emperor and leader of the Dynize war effort, with the single mission to hunt down Ben Styke of the Mad Lancers and bring back his head, just to show us that things are a little more personal this time around.

Michel Bravis is back in the thick of things, choosing to remain in the capital of Landfall to smuggle families out of the city. He's maintained his Blackhat contacts since the fall of the city, but when things go south, he's forced to embed himself into Dynize society with a mission from Taniel to smuggle out a contact known only by “Mara” by becoming a member of the household led by Meln-Yaret. This, for me, was one of the more compelling story lines in this novel. It offers up some fun scenes, watching Michel have to juggle his cover as a member of a Dynize household, acting as a turncoat from the Blackhats and helping them uncover any remaining agents in the city while he tracks down Mara for Taniel, but it also offers us a window into Dynize culture beyond what we see the battlefield. I felt the same conflict that Michel did, as he tries to reconcile his inevitable betrayal of the household members he befriends, and that speaks to the way the Dynize themselves are portrayed as well as the sense of camaraderie McClellan seems to build so easily in each of his arcs. Yaret's household seems to be one of the more reasonable ones, and a main rival to Ka-Sedial's household, and Michel has to deal with those rivalries as well an eventual love interest with a Priveleged of a rival house that only works to complicate things for him.

Styke's journey across Fatrasta continues the bloody story set up for him in Sins, partnering with Ka-Poel to find one of the two remaining godstones, his arc is a mixture of sheer brutality as he carves his way through Dynize soldiers, and quieter scenes with Celine where we get to see more of him in the fatherly context we've seen before, as well as the sometimes uncomfortable scenes where the two overlap. An interestign aspect of the story introduced in this book, though, is his hunt for the old members of the Lancers that were responsible for him being captured by Fidelis Jes in the first place, after the first is captured and brought to him, only to meet a visceral end at the pointy end of Styke's Boz knife. His hunt takes some unexpected turns when Ben opts to let one member go free rather than be executed in front of his family, and the other walks away coming off better in a fist fight. Each encounter has Ben looking inward at who he was, and who he is, and not liking everything he sees.

The third arc I was a little colder on, I'm not super sold on Vlora as a character just yet, and she doesn't seem to grow too much as a character over the course of the book (at least, in contrast to Ben and even Michel), and I felt a little frustrated with her continued trend of making enemies instead of friends, even so far as distrusting Taniel's intentions for the godstone for almost the entirety of the book (mostly stemming from his apparent “ascension” to something beyond that of a powder mage. However, I feel that a lot of my thoughts towards Vlora stem from an unfair comparison to the almost god-like figure of Tamas, who I found to be much more compelling, but more competent on the politics side of things as well, a thought that was humorously reflected upon by Major Gustar in a conversation with Styke.

“Field Marshal Tamas was worth it. Lady Flint – Vlora, as most of us knew her when she was still a girl – she might not be quite there yet, but she will be someday, of that I'm certain.”