The Powder Mage Trilogy Reviewed

“I would die for my country, but I’d rather kill for it.” — Field Marshal Tamas.

The Powder Mage Trilogy by Brian McClellan is an excellent work of political and epic fantasy with very rich characters, phenomenal worldbuilding, and a plotline with twists and turns of epic proportions. The trilogy—comprising Promise of Blood, The Crimson Campaign, and The Autumn Republic—rapidly evolves from a local political coup into a cosmic struggle for survival.

First, a spoiler-free review. Watch out for the spoiler warning when I switch to a full analysis.

The Powder Mage trilogy kicks off right after a successful revolution in the French style. Field Marshal Tamas has overthrown King Manhout and taken control of Adro. It’s an absolute banger of a start that really gives you the sense that the world has existed long before this plot started and will continue to exist long after the books are done, because this plot (of which we only see the aftermath) is ten years in the making.

We’re introduced to our first POV character, Inspector Adamant, as he is summoned to the Skyline Palace to see Tamas. Adamant is a very interesting choice for a character. He is old, having already retired from the police force, in debt (due to a failed business experiment), and a father of seven (SEVEN!) children. I do feel that more could have been done with the children, perhaps by reducing their number. I never really felt emotionally connected to the kids because Adamant sent them away immediately after accepting a job from Tamas, and we don’t see them or Adamant’s wife again for quite some time. That being said, the inspector himself was a great POV. An honorable man who is trying to negotiate some very tricky situations—a father and an intelligent man. He was a great POV to follow throughout the series. As Privileged Bobador says: That man is eminently employable.

We then switch over to Tamas himself in the palace. Tamas is not a sympathetic character, at least not at first. The man is up to his elbows in blood, and it doesn’t get better as he sends literally thousands to the guillotine and lets the citizens riot in order for them to “get the blood out of their system.” He plays realpolitik at a very high level and is strategically very smart. Now, I say he’s not a sympathetic character, but I loved reading his chapters, and he kept me engaged in the story throughout. Just don’t expect a hero; he has laudable goals, but he is firmly in the “ends justify means” camp, and he has very few limits on what he is willing to employ as means.

Somewhere in between all the men, we have our single female POV, Nila, whom we meet as a laundress trying to keep a nobleman’s son from falling into the clutches of the revolution. Nila, in the first book and most of the second, is a minor POV who gets only a little screen time, and mostly her plotline seems to be there just to show the aristocracy side of the story a little better. That starts to change in book 2 when her plotline becomes more important, and finally, in book 3, she comes into her own, but her presence in the book is fairly minor.

And finally, our last POV character is Taniel Two-Shot, Tamas’ son, who has just come home from a war with a “savage” and mute girl in tow (Ka-Poel), whom he is not sleeping with. In fact, Taniel’s fiancée, Vlora, has betrayed him with another man, so he’s pretty heartbroken. At first, Taniel came across (to me) as a whiny brat with a crap relationship with his father. And that’s sort of true. But Taniel is more than he seems, and he really grows throughout the series. By the end of book 3, I was definitely Team Taniel.

And that concludes the POV characters and the starting point of the plot. It’s also the end of the spoiler-free section, so run away now if you don’t want spoilers :)

Book 1: Promise of Blood (all about revolution & divinity)

While Tamas struggles to maintain order in Adro, a deeper threat emerges: the Kresimir Prophecy. The revolution inadvertently triggers the return of Kresimir, the god who supposedly created the world and is at the center of the Nine Nations’ theology.

It turns out that Kresimir is not a benevolent father figure but a vengeful tyrant. Millennia ago, he put in place the Kings of the Nine, and he takes it very poorly if any of them are killed. In fact, all members of the royal cabal of sorcery are under a geas to kill whoever kills a king. (This puts Tamas in a very awkward situation with regards to the one remaining member of the Adro Royal Cabal, Bo, whom Tamas raised as a son.)

However, when Kresimir does come back, summoned by an idiot mage called Julene, Taniel puts a bullet through his eye, and though Kresimir doesn’t die, he does lose the eye, which is a pretty good indication that actually, gods can bleed… But can they die?

While all this is unfolding, Kez is invading Adro, there’s internal dissent about the revolution (although that’s squashed fairly soon), and we find out about a guy called Lord Claremonte, whose agent, Lord Vetas, takes Adamant’s family hostage. This almost results in Adamant betraying Tamas, but in the end, Adamant’s honor holds, and he confesses the blackmail to Tamas.

The first book ends with Kresimir shot in the eye, the god Adom cooking for Tamas’ army, and Adamant working to capture Lord Vetas (and Nila being “captured” by Lord Vetas, but really, she chooses to accompany him when he kidnaps Jakob, the noble boy she’s looking after).

Promise of Blood Themes

The first book is a lot of exploration of the different kinds of magic, and that’s the first theme I want to talk about. Central to the plot is the magic system itself. The Powder Mages (like Tamas and Taniel) can detonate gunpowder at a distance, fire bullets without powder, go into a powder trance, and various other abilities to do with guns. To my mind, they represent the industrial age—using gunpowder to gain abilities—while the Privileged (traditional sorcerers) represent the old, aristocratic order. The Privileged touch the Else with gloved fingers, and gunpowder makes them sneeze. They do not like powder mages at all. And indeed, Tamas slaughters the whole royal cabal of Adro because the Privileged uphold the monarchy.

The Powder Mage Trilogy is a bit more subtle than Shadows of the Apt, but I think the same theme of progress vs. tradition exists in both series. To me, the clash between powder mage and Privileged is a metaphor for the world’s transition from feudalism to modernity. I do wonder if Nila’s new form of magic (as revealed in book 3) is a potential transformation of Privileged sorcery into modernity. One of the questions that remains unanswered, I think :)

Book 2: The Crimson Campaign (What is a god)

While the first book was about the spark of revolution, The Crimson Campaign is about the grueling reality of total war. Adro is being squeezed by the Kez invasion, and our characters are pushed to their limits.

Tamas and the Rearguard Action

Field Marshal Tamas finds himself cut off behind enemy lines after a disastrous attempt to flank the Kez army. This section of the book is a masterclass in military fantasy. Tamas is at his most desperate and his most brilliant. Forced to lead a small brigade through Kez territory, Tamas’s journey is a grim trek of survival. This section of the book really shows his strategic skills to their max. It’s also a time of growth when he makes peace with Vlora for her cheating on Taniel and he makes peace with his brother-in-law, Gavril. Overall, it’s a great section of the book and ends with Tamas not only beating the Kez that are chasing him but capturing Beon, third son of the Kez king, and finding a new alliance with the Deliv.

That being said, Tamas should really have been paying attention to the Kez false flag operation, where they had Kez soldiers faking being Adran soldiers in order to get the Deliv to enter the war on Kez’s side. That incident (which he used to his advantage) would not be the last time that there are false flag operations in the series. One might even call it… foreshadowing.

Taniel and the Death of Divinity

Back in Adro, Taniel is dealing with the fallout of shooting Kresimir. He is addicted to gunpowder, suffering from what we would call PTSD in today’s day and age, and being hunted by the “god” he blinded. This is where the worldbuilding takes a very interesting turn as it becomes more and more clear that the gods are not divine. They are simply Preprivileged—ancient, incredibly powerful sorcerers who have survived for thousands of years. They are petty, vengeful, and remarkably human in their flaws.

Taniel leaves the city to go to the army after news comes of Tamas’ apparent death. There he finds the army in complete disarray with the general constantly retreating. Taniel tries to work within the army but keeps running afoul of the generals, since he no longer has Tamas’ protection. However, it’s also clear that Adro has a traitor. And indeed, it turns out that the army has two traitors, one ideological and one simply corrupt.

We also learn a great deal about the bone-eyes magic in this section, which is the kind of mage that Ka-Poel (Taniel’s “savage” companion) is. Bone-eye magic is sympathetic in basis. Ka-Poel makes dolls of people, smears their DNA on the doll (normally through blood), and then uses those dolls to make magic.

She gets Taniel to go after Kresimir’s blood, resulting in Taniel’s betrayal by the ideological traitor in the Adran army, and he is captured but manages to get free, with Kresimir’s blood on his hands. At the end of the book, Kresimir kills Adom, but Ka-Poel has Kresimir’s blood thanks to Taniel, and she contains the god. Because yeah, Ka-Poel is… Well, she’s something else.

The Siege and the Long Game

While Tamas is missing and Taniel is hunting gods, Inspector Adamant is stuck in the besieged capital of Adopest. His plotline becomes a race against time to uncover the long game being played by Lord Claremonte.

For the duration of book 2, Adamant is mostly hunting Lord Vetas. He uncovers the mysterious identity of the proprietor, gets involved with some of Ricard Tumbler’s politics, and generally tootles around Adro doing investigator things. Which is not to say his story is not interesting—it is very interesting—but a great deal of his story is also there to keep us up to date with the events in Adro.

For him, the end of the book is a spectacular climax. He captures Lord Vetas and learns that his son has been turned into a Black Warden, a creature without a mind. Adamant makes a deal with Bo for Bo to kill said son.

However, the book is not done. Lord Claremonte has announced his intention to run for leader of Adro in the country’s first election, and at the end, he arrives with a whole army of Brugandians and destroys the temples of Kresimir….

And on that note, the book ends. Take a bow, Claremonte.

The Crimson Campaign Themes

For me, the major themes of book 2 were the political fallout that comes after a revolution, as explored in Adro with the campaign of Ricard Tumbler and the political uncertainty in the capital. In addition, without Tamas’ leadership, the army falls apart, showing one of a revolution’s great weaknesses: without a guiding hand, the different factions of a revolution eat their own, resulting in corruption, counter-revolution, and chaos. And then, of course, there are all the divine shenanigans that continue into book 3.

Book 3: The Autumn Republic (Power Corrupts)

Claremonte emerges as a terrifyingly effective antagonist, an absolute master of bureaucracy and public image. He uses the chaos of the war and the food shortages to position himself as a savior to the citizens of Adro, undermining everything Tamas fought for. His campaign to take over Adro as its elected leader gathers steam in the capital.

In book 3, Nila finally begins to shine. She discovers that she can “touch the Else,” but without gloves, making her a very new kind of Privileged. Her role shifts from a passive observer of the aristocracy to a budding power in her own right. She accompanies Bo and Adamant in their quest to find Taniel, who went missing at the end of book 2.

The three of them go to the army, where they discover a budding civil war (because Adro hasn’t had trouble enough already). There is a great deal of chaos and shenanigans, but in the end, Tamas returns to the army, Bo finds and saves Taniel, Ka-Poel and her doll of Kresimir are kidnapped and taken back to Adro.

And indeed, all roads lead to Adro, where we learn that Lord Claremonte (and his other half—I’ll leave her identity unspoiled) is also a god. He has, in fact, been killing the other gods of the Nine and absorbing their power, and he plans to create a massive divine theocracy with himself at the top.

An earth-shaking divine battle ensues, which the good guys win, though Tamas dies and Taniel skulks off under the theory of being dead, leaving Adamant and Nila as our only “living” POVs.

The Autumn Republic Themes

I think the core theme of book 3 (besides there always being a bigger fish) is that power is a corrupting force. Various good (or at least reasonable) people throughout the book are corrupted by their desire for power and wealth, culminating in Claremonte himself, the ambitious god.

But book 3 is also the culmination of the overall themes of the series, so let’s break away from the plot and hit the high-level thoughts I took from The Powder Mage Trilogy.

Core Themes of The Powder Mage Trilogy

The Gods Are a Lie:

By revealing the gods as mere humans with massive egos and magic, Brian McClellan suggests that humanity doesn’t need “higher powers” to guide them—for better or worse, we are responsible for our own fate.

By the end of the trilogy, the myth of divinity is dismantled. We learn that the gods were simply the first and most powerful sorcerers. Their “deaths”—culminating in the final stand against Kresimir and the revelation of Brue, Adelpha, and others—signify the end of an era of theological tyranny.

The March of Progress:

As I said, I think the magic system represents the technological taking the place of the mystical, the world outgrowing feudalism and moving into the industrial revolution.

But it is also a story set in the aftermath of a revolution, and it asks some difficult questions about the cost of progress. Tamas’ opening in the first book is an absolutely blood-soaked one that pretty directly asks: How many innocent lives is a better future worth? The series never fully absolves, nor accuses Tamas of his sins, which really made me think about the ends-justify-the-means question and when bloodshed and revolution are worth it.

Legacy and Fatherhood:

And speaking of Tamas, the fractured relationship between Tamas and Taniel is the emotional heartbeat of the story. Taniel wrestles with the weight of his father’s legacy and the difficulty of stepping out from under a legendary parent’s shadow. Tamas struggles to express to his son how much he loves him. It could have turned into a whine fest with Taniel, but McClellan did a great job of avoiding that, in my opinion, and made Taniel a competent man in his own right—and not too whiny.

Destruction of the Old:

Still on the topic of Tamas (no matter what anyone tells you, Tamas is the main character): From the guillotining of kings to the literal killing of gods, the series is about the violent, messy birth of a new world. It argues that for a society to truly move forward, it must sometimes destroy the foundations it was built upon. It really made me sit and think about when a system can be reformed vs. when a system must be destroyed for any progress to be made.

And that also brought up the question of: who will pay the price, and who is willing to be the destroyer?

Overall, this series was an incredible read. I could pick nits if I wanted to, but why? I loved it, it was a great ride, it made me think, it made me cry, it made me laugh.

What more can you ask for in an epic fantasy series?