Field Marshal returns to his country to find that, for the first time in history, the capital city of Adopest lies in the hands of a foreign invader.
Inspector Adamat is drawn into an army almost on the brink of a civil war with hopes of finally finding his kidnapped son.
Taniel Two-shot is being hunted, and must safe-guard the only chance that Adro has of getting through the war avoiding complete decimation at the hands of a god.
In 2013’s Promise of Blood, Brian McClellan drew readers into a world of muskets, gunpowder, and sorcery where Field Marshal Tamas, sick of the monarchy’s reign, staged a coup to transform Adro into the land’s first ever republic. The execution of the king, however, set off a chain of events that Tamas could never have imagined: A war with the neighboring country Kez and the return of the ancient gods.
2014 brought The Crimson Campaign in which the god Kresimir, enraged at the injury inflicted upon him by Taniel Two-shot leads the Kez armies in a fierce attack that results in Tamas and a few thousand of his men trapped behind enemy lines. At the end of the novel, Tamas returns to Adro with new allies and a renewed earnest to end the war– that is until he finds the capital city taken by the country of Brudania.
The Autumn Republic opens not too long after the events of The Crimson Campaign, and it does not let you close and set down the book very easily. I found it extremely difficult to stop reading late at night. The whole entire story is filled with tension and loss. There’s assassination attempts, political maneuvering, battles, powerful magic, angry gods, and so much more. When an author includes so much in one novel, it is quite possible for them to lose track of where the story is going, but McClellan obviously knows what he is doing when he writes these things. He fleshes-out characters even more than he had in the first two books. The most noticeable of which is Nila who, by the end of TCC, discovered that she is not only a Privileged, but perhaps the most powerful one in history. I felt like she was kind of out of place in Promise of Blood, though in The Crimson Campaign, McClellan fixed that. It wasn’t until The Autumn Republic that I felt like she truly came into her own. She is given much more to do this time around, and the reader gets to know her a lot better than the previous two novels.
One of my favorite things about McClellan’s novels is that he so expertly describes the setting and atmosphere of his world. I find it easy to imagine the cities, battles, and more. He does this even better than ever in TAR.
While I could go on and on about how much I loved this book, I realize that it would probably get incredibly long. As such, here are the things you need to know: If you have read the first two novel in the trilogy, read this one. You’ll love it. If you haven’t read them, read them. You won’t regret it. What you will regret, however, is how quickly you turn the pages and finishing a lot quicker than you expected.
Evan W.S. Morgan 