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But I found Powder Mage to be disappointing overall. Book 1 was very good, but I don't like Tamas as a character, and there was too much focus on him, and not enough on the detective who made Book 1 fun. Though the world-building is pretty fun and I'll get to the second series eventually.
Shadow campaigns otoh, is about Napoleonic-level warfare, revolutions spreading throughout the continent, while in the background there's a whole struggle between demons and Inquisition-that's-powered-by-demons. - also liked the characters in this series more. The ending of Book 4 worries me, but overall, I feel it's a better series.
I'll echo Abyss' Ketty Jay recco. Think TaleSpins, but with demons and stuff. Fun little series.
Best musketpunk standalone I've read was "Guns of Dawn" by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Magic's pretty low key, but that just makes it more impactful.
A similar variation is Chris Evans' "Of Bone and Thunder". Think Vietnam War but with dragon's instead of planes. I think the tech might not be gunpowder, though, can't recall off the top of my head. Evans also has a pure musketpunk trilogy "Iron Elves" (one of the earliest examples of the genre, actually- before it became popular), but I found that one to be pretty by the numbers.
There is also Tchaikovsky's "Shadows of the Apt" where guns get discovered and introduced as the series progresses, but I'm reluctant to recommend it, because the characterization in the first few books is really, REALLY bad. I stuck with the series, and Tchaikovsky manages some amazing things as he clearly improved as a writer while working on this series; it also has the distinction of being a 10-book epic that actually had a good ending. But those early books (2 and 3 especially) are REALLY weak. Unless you're all about world-building, cannot recommend.
Oh, and Chris Wooding's "Braided Path" . It's an Asian-set epic fantasy, and it's not really about the guns; but they most certainly use gunpowder. And that series is just great, and more people need to read it.
This post has been edited by Mentalist: 01 October 2019 - 01:21 AM
