 Okay, so today we are finishing off the Powder Mage trilogy. A while ago I read Promise of Blood, and I thought it was fine, but I didn't quite get the hype. Then I finally got around to reading the Crimson Campaign a while ago, and I thought that one was really, really good, and I really liked it. And then we got to the Autumn Republic, and this one... I have very mixed feelings on this one. This is the introduction song. It's not very good, but it's not too long. Okay, to start off I just want to say that for the most part this book is still really good. I think most aspects of it are average or above average. And really the only part that bothered me a lot was the ending. And I won't say a lot about it. What I will say is that the climax was very uninspired. You know, it didn't feel like the whole series had been building towards this epic final confrontation, and then we finally got it. It felt more like, oh, okay, this is what we're going to be doing at the end now, and then it's over. And so that was very disappointing. But overall still a pretty good book. So this one starts off right after the Crimson Campaign ended. Okay, Lord Claremont and the Brudanian Army have taken over Atapest, and they are claiming to be on their side, but they're pretty clearly not. And Lord Claremont is running for first minister of Adro, which is basically president or prime minister. Tamas has finally gotten out of Kez, and he's brought the remnants of his army back into Adro, and they're going to try and throw the remainder of the Kez army out. And Taniel and Capole are still doing their thing with Kressamir, where they're trying to kill him, but he's a god, so he's very difficult to kill. And well, that's the gist of it, yeah. The strongest part of this book, I think, is the plot, because as much as I may have some issues with parts of it, overall it flows very well. And that's something that all three books have. There's always something going on. There's plenty of twists and turns, so you never can really predict exactly what's going to happen next. And even if you can predict one twist, well, there's another one. So you're always being surprised. And I got through this book pretty quickly. It's a fairly long book, but I only took around four days to finish it. So yeah, all three of them, they flow into each other nicely. And it works great until the climax, which I will get to a little bit more in the spoiler section. I don't want to blue-ball you too much, but yeah. So that is definitely the best part. And at the beginning of the book, when Tomas finally comes back, we actually see some really big battles between the Kez and the Adruns. And Tomas, we actually finally see his military genius now. Which I'm a fan of because in the first book, we didn't see it at all. And in the second book, I mean, they tried to show it to us. I didn't quite get the feeling that he was really a genius out of it. But then in this one, we actually see some of his military maneuvers and shit. And yeah, so I really do buy that he's a military genius now. Those parts were all great. I loved all the battle scenes. So plot-wise, this book is pretty great. This is very much a modern fantasy story. But it has some callbacks to older fantasy stuff. But it's really not about saving the world. And the first book made it feel like, okay, this is just about saving the world from an evil god who's going to come back. And so that was part of why I wasn't super into it and part of why I wasn't super excited to read the second book until much later. But in this one, or well, really in the last one too, but especially in this one, you really see it's not about saving the whole world. It's about just adro. You know, it's about this country and how it's trying to move forward. It's trying to move past having a tyrant king. It's trying to become a republic. It's just about this one country and the people in it. And if they lose, if the good guys lose, that is pretty bad, don't get me wrong. But it's not going to destroy the whole country. It's not like everyone inside is going to be genocided. It's just going to suck for a while. So in some ways, they're fighting more for ideals than they are for simple survival. In that regard, I think that this book works really, really well. The other best part, which again, it applies to the whole series, but I don't think I've really mentioned it up until this point, is that the writing is very easy to digest. You know, it's very straightforward. There aren't a whole lot of metaphors or similes or anything like that. They don't use a whole lot of colorful language, which some people enjoy that. I get it. But I myself prefer if it's just straightforward. You know, if it just comes out and tells you what's going on and what's happening. And that makes it easier to follow. And that was part of why I read through it so quick. All three books I got through fairly easily. And so I just do appreciate that. I've heard some criticism of Brian McClellan in the past because of the way he writes. But that's kind of personal taste. I personally love that. Now I have to get to the characters. And this, I feel weird criticizing this. Because let me just say the good stuff. So pretty much every major character has personality in all these books. OK, Tommas, Daniel, Adamat, Beau, Capole, they all have some personality. You know, I understand where they're coming from. I understand their feelings on things. I understand that they do have some life outside of what we see on the page. They aren't cardboard cutouts. They're all decent enough characters. They're all there. But here's the thing. None of them really grabs me. You know, like they're all decent people and I could relate to them on some level. But for some reason, it never really goes past a surface level. Like I never felt like I could quite go into their psyche and pick apart their brain and see exactly what they're thinking and how they're feeling on things. Nothing about these characters that really grabs me. You know, there's nothing about them that really stands out to me thinking, wow, this guy, this one aspect of him is really interesting or really inspiring. There's just, there's nothing quite there. So while the cast in this, I would say is above average, it still doesn't feel quite as good as the plot does. And I think part of the reason for that is also that a lot of the interesting stuff they did was in all of their backstories. Like think about it, there's Taniel going around in Patrasta and meeting Kapol and having all their adventures there. Like that's where he got his reputation and, okay, we never really see that. And Tamas, he got his reputation during the Girlish Wars and he spent like 20 some odd years as the head of the Adrin army, as the right hand man of the king before he finally decided to overthrow him in a coup. And if we had seen all of that firsthand, if we had seen Adam, excuse me, not Adam, Tamas' journey from being a servant of the king to being the guy that overthrows him, that would have been fascinating. But at the same time, I think that would have detracted from the plot a lot because if they wanted this to be like some big epic six book, six or seven book long fantasy series, then that could have worked. But if they're just doing a trilogy, then I think it works better to have a fast pace where you just sort of start as the coup is happening. Hell, actually, the first book starts right after the coup has happened, so you're thrown right into the middle of it. So in a nutshell, I guess plot-wise, that works better. It works better to do that. But character-wise, I can't help but feel that if it had started a while earlier and we had seen them progress through their lives, it probably would have been better. Like I feel like I would have had more of a connection to them and through the story as a whole. And something I didn't really notice until I read this book or until I got near the end of this book, it doesn't really have a villain until the very end. And I'm about to go into the spoiler section, but I just want to say real quick that there isn't really one central protagonist that we can focus on throughout the whole series. And I think that is a serious missed opportunity here. So overall, the Powered Mage trilogy. I liked it. I really liked it at points. There's just some stuff which I think is more personal preference than anything that didn't quite grab me. You know, I think with a couple of tweaks, these books could have been something really special, as they are. They're still pretty good. And I think there's plenty of people out there who really liked them and love them way more than I do. I totally get that. I get why you would love them. It's just, for me personally, I read them. And overall, they're just, they're good. That's about all I can say about them. So now the spoiler section. If you haven't read it, then go away. OK, so in the last about 100 pages of this book, we discover that Lord Claremont, the guy running for First Minister of Adro, is actually the god Brud. OK, he's the patron god of Brudania. And OK, you hear that and you think, OK, that sounds kind of interesting, I guess. But then you start realizing, like, OK, him and his other half, who is Lady Charis, because he's just one god that exists in two parts, they have been kind of manipulating stuff behind the scenes to help kickstart the Kezadro war and to help overthrow the king and just a bunch of other stuff that's happened throughout the series. They've been working behind the scenes. And, um, OK, it's not a terrible twist, I don't think. But then they become the villains at the very end. Like, they lose the election and they decide, OK, we're just gonna kill everybody now, we're gonna take over by force. And so they just have one final battle during which they defeat them and Tamas dies and Taniel fakes his own death. And I don't have strong feelings on Tamas' death. I think it was done a little melodramatically. Like, if they just pulled it back a little, I think it would have hurt more. And Taniel faking his own death is, that was kind of annoying, but I don't have strong feelings on it. But anyways, uh, Brood, he... I mean, here's the thing, like, when you have a big epic final battle like that, it feels big and epic when you do it right at least. It feels big and epic because you've been building towards it for so long. You know, the characters are finally getting close to getting what they want. Like, they're about to destroy the Dark Lord and save the world, or they're finally about to win that big competition or something like that. And in this case, it feels mostly like, okay, all the fighting has wound down and we just gotta deal with this election now. And once we get that, we can just get back to rebuilding things. And then, okay, the election goes the way they want it to, and then, oh, okay, out of nowhere, just big angry god. And, again, Brood and Lord Claremont even haven't really been in the story that much. They haven't been the primary antagonists. Like, the closest thing we've had to a primary antagonist is Cressimir, and even then, he's been kind of off-screen for the most part. So, just the whole final battle falls very, very flat for me. And even though the action is still written as well as it ever has been, and it still has all the characters and such that I don't want to die, it just didn't work because I couldn't feel the stakes. There was a part of me that was going, this guy just came out of nowhere. You know, it's like having a lot of animated kids movies nowadays. They have a twist villain where a guy turns out to be the bad guy at the end, and it very rarely works out just because, well, we don't spend a whole lot of time getting to know the villain. We don't spend a whole lot of time focusing on their conflict with the heroes. And so, for that reason alone, basically, is... that's definitely the biggest issue with this book, by a huge margin. Because beyond that, like, if it had a better climax, or even if they just cut that part out altogether, and they just had the ending of the Kez War be the climax, I think that would have been a lot better because, well, yeah, we just wouldn't have a villain that came out of nowhere. So, overall, the climax of this book and this whole series was a huge letdown, and it does drag the rest of the book down with it. So that's a big part of my issue with it. But, like I said before, it's still a good series. You know, like, don't let that bother you too much if you want to go into it. You know, Journey Before Destination and all that. Now, I just want to do a quick announcement on what book I'm going to review next. Now, I know I just did a reading list, which I'm still going to go through that list, don't get me wrong. But, literally the day after I made it, I got an ARC copy for the sequel to a book I reviewed a while ago, and I'm still going to go through that list. And, I'm really excited to get into it. So, that one will be a surprise, and... Oh, hey, what's that? Thanks to Christopher Hawkin, Desbrennan, and all my other patrons. Please consider checking out my page and donating, and if you can't do that, then like, comment, and subscribe in order to help prevent me from being subsumed by the avalanche of content that is YouTube. Please. Bye.