Where Michel, Styke, and Vlora Oppose a New God

Blood of Empire by Brian McClellan
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I loved the book and the whole series. It's long, so I'm glad to be done, in a way, but it never dragged and never got old. Too much action, too many good characters for that to be the case.

This is the third book of the second trilogy, and it has the same characteristics as the previous books: excellent but also fun world-building; intriguing POV characters; multiple storylines; a good balance of male and female characters (that is, many strong female characters, especially compared to old-timey fantasy); clear, energetic language with a strong authorial voice; and an excellent magic system.

Fatrasta and Dynize parallel a colonized North America and an uncolonized Meso-America, respectively, enough to be pretty sure that was Brian McClellan's starting point, but the continents and their cultures are jumbled up and rearranged and straight-up changed enough that it's its own thing. Still, there are sufficient parallels to allow for some commentary, some exploration of colonizing and the colonized along with many other political concerns. Not in a heavy-handed way, IMO--the books are primarily entertainment--but the ideas contributed a lot to my enjoyment of the novels.

So, thought-provoking, I guess I should say, in a positive way.

The various plot lines are pretty buttoned up by the end, rewarding the reader with enough happy and sad and scared and relieved and surprised moments to feel like you got everything you were owed. I woulda liked a bit more Taniel, tbh, but he's there, and there's lots of Ka-poel being awesome. Poor Styke is trapped for a long time behaving himself, being political and cautious, but we still get some amazing battle scenes with him. Michel, the spy, gets some fun stuff to do, more overt and more heroic than he was allowed before. And Vlora, without her powder mage abilities, is reduced but still formidable, her brilliant strategy and tactics coming more to the fore. All of these characters are well used and integral to the plot; every POV character (with an ally or two) is impressively integral to the overall story.

And another thing...

Enough. I liked it a lot. You oughta read it. Time for me to catch up with whatever he's writing now.

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