Wrath of Empire

Wrath of Empire is a fantasy novel by the American writer Brian McClellan, published by Orbit Books in 2018 as the second book of the Gods of Blood and Powder trilogy.

The trilogy is built on the idea that a war can be won or lost by finding an object, and then arranges its characters at different distances from the search. Lady Vlora Flint has thousands of civilians to keep alive and a discipline to maintain while she does it, which makes her sections the slowest and the most political. Michel Bravis is inside the occupying administration, where his work is to find a person rather than a stone, and Ben Styke is sent with a small force to destroy the third Godstone under the protection of a bloodmage. McClellan moves between them in short chapters, and the book's interest is in how the powers of the setting behave when the states that restrained them have collapsed. The trilogy continued with Blood of Empire in 2019, and it is set in the same world as the author's earlier Powder Mage novels, in which the first Godstone and the sorcery of gunpowder were established.