Hello and welcome to this episode of the Oxford Fantasy Literature podcast. I'm Catherine Ollie and I'm a junior research fellow in mediaeval studies here in Oxford. And in this episode, I'll be introducing the work of Brian, McClellan noted for his powder made novels, The Powder Age trilogy and its sequel trilogy, Gods of Blood and Powder, and a warning at the beginning that there will be major spoilers for both of these trilogies ahead.
Rather than taking its inspiration from the mediaeval period, McClellan's work is set in a kind of early industrial period and could be categorised as flintlock or gunpowder fantasy alongside a fairly traditional magic system in which uses quote privileged reach for and manipulate the else. Each finger of the hand being attached to one of the five elements Fire, Earth, Air, Water and Aether, which enables them to do powerful sorcery. There is also a competing, gunpowder based magic system.
Those with the affinity called powder mages, or Markt, can snort or eat gunpowder in order to attain a heightened state of awareness a so-called powder trance. And they can also manipulate gunpowder based weaponry, for example, floating a bullet farther and with greater accuracy, and could be obtained simply by firing it from a rifle, a method that's often used to assassinate privileged from a distance. Or they could ignite gunpowder from a distance with that powers.
And this disturbs the previous balance of power in which the privileged had no rivals. So you can see the social disruptions of the early industrial period in which an emerging class of industrialists and manufacturers begins to challenge the supremacy of the old landed elite being recast in McClellan's work in magical terms.
Opening with a military coup masterminded by Field Marshal Thomas of the Atran Army, which takes obvious inspiration from the French Revolution with the aristocracy being guillotined in the streets, McClellan's work is an excellent example of how to successfully take the realism out of fantasy. But it's also a study in contradictions and a demonstration of just how pervasive and inescapable such loyalist tropes can be.
Because by the end of his second trilogy and a major spoiler alert here it emerges that one of the series principal female characters couple the mysterious companion of Field Marshal Thomas's son Tinio is in fact a lost denies princess. And the trilogy ends with her ascending to godlike status and becoming the new empress of the Die Nice Empire. From a reader's point of view, it's a satisfying ending in spite of the cliché from a more critical perspective.
It's very interesting to see a series that began by so definitely rejecting fantasies, fascination with royalty and by succumbing to that very lure. Although Capone is far from a traditional empress and indeed she hopes to use her position to modernise denies to the point where Monarch is no longer needed and she can retire. Still, the resilience of what we might termed the lost air motif is remarkable.
Both Koppel and Field Marshal Thomas then sees tremendous, almost unlimited power with the aim of using it for the common good. But it's a good that is defined almost entirely, according to their own perspective, a perspective I believe we are meant to share. Seeing modernisation and democratisation as a good thing, but there remains a fascinating tension between despotism and democracy in McClellan's work.
His narratives coalesce around individuals who usher in sweeping change, reshaping the world according to their desires, and his books leave little room for the slower, gradual march of progress. Amidst all their revolutions and wars for independence, of course, it's also a vexed question and one right for deeper sociological analysis.
Whether depicting a military coup like Thomas's segueing successfully, if not entirely smoothly into democratic governmental rule is not just as wishful and unrealistic as the optimistic, noble realism which characterises many earlier and indeed current fantasy works. History would perhaps suggest that military revolutions have more chance of leading to turmoil or a military dictatorship than to democratic self-governance.
And key to the success of the revolution in McClellan's novels is the death of its instigator. At the end of the modern age trilogy, which precludes the possibility of his holding on to power for too long and becoming the very dictator he has deposed, then McClellan does revisit this idea in his second trilogy in the character of Lindhout, who begins as a liberation leader and is transformed by the realities of power into something more oppressive but safely dead.
Thomas offers a non-threatening legacy, one that can be embraced without fear. His death offers a kind of political closure, but it's also a personal one. Resolving finally the troubled relationship that he had with his son. Indeed, the theme of fatherhood runs prominently through both of McClellan's trilogies.
As a side note, it's extremely fitting that the book, which starts it all promise of Blood is dedicated to McClellan's father, is the figure of Thomas, of course, who really embodies paternity and becomes the vehicle for its exploration in the first trilogy.
Thomas's efforts to become the father of a nation, masterminding the transformation of Andrew from a monarchy into a republic take a heavy toll on his personal relationships, most particularly his relationship with his son, Daniel, but also slightly more peripherally with his adopted son, Bob Dole and his adopted daughter, Laura. At the beginning of the Powder Age trilogy, Thomas Centennial have a fraught, almost impersonal relationship.
As a result of the many years, Thomas has spent meticulously planning his revolution rather than building a relationship with his son on Daniel's side, Thomas's impressive reputation as a military commander also leaves him a lot to live up to. And when they initially reunite after two years of separation, Thomas is seemingly more moved by the exquisite pair of duelling pistols that Tannehill gives him than by his son's actual return. Quote Thomas introduced Daniel as a powdered mage was.
That all he wants to the field marshal, just another soldier. Tanya muses to himself in promise of blunt page twenty five. Their slow journey toward understanding and acceptance of one another is, I would argue, the major emotional arc of the trilogy. And it culminates as Thomas lays dying and finally admits to his son just how proud of him. He has become something that has been unspoken but now finally achieves full expression.
And Thomas his last words to his son in the autumn, the public page five five five. Your mother says, Hi my boy, we love you. Finally, reconcile the fractured pieces of their family into one harmonious whole present together, if only for an instant before death. Separate them again. Ben Stake in McClellan's second trilogy, set in contrasts to a former territory of the C&S empire, serves as an interesting comparison to Thomas and continues McClellan's exploration of fatherhood.
Like Thomas, Steak is a military figure. The leader of the Mad Lancers, who fought bravely infantry lost his war for independence. Also, like Thomas, he is a man on a mission. In his case, he's out to get revenge on the men who betrayed him at the end of the war and saw him sent to a penal labour camp for 10 years. Just as Thomas wanted revenge on the king of Ad-Rock on a personal level for allowing his beloved wife to be executed some years before the main action of the series.
And again, like Thomas, Steak is an important paternal figure. The only one of the main protagonists in the Gods of Blood and Powder trilogy with parental responsibilities. While incarcerated, he adopted an orphaned girl, Selene, to protect her in the labour camp when her own father died. That? In contrast to Hamas, however, a state manages to walk away from his mission and not to be consumed by it.
Hamas gives everything for his vision of Andro, including his life, while steak succeeds in the end in building a new life for himself and selling his growth as a parental figure is underlined by his troubled relationship with his own abusive father, whom he killed as a boy to protect his younger sister. Stake takes after his father in the sense that he is a very violent man, but he has channelled that violence into controlled military action rather than indiscriminate abuse.
And when it begins to control him in the course of his revenge quest, he's able to reject its influence and walk away. His ability to do so is directly linked by McClelland to his parental role and the value that he places on familial relationships. So on the verge of killing Tenney, one of the men who betrayed him, state looks back to find solace in his adopted daughter watching him. Not it has to be said in horror, more in anticipation, but the sight makes Dich hesitate.
And he spares Tony instead of killing him, explaining to Selene afterwards that quote Hardest thing a soldier can do is leave the killing behind him. Tenney didn't sell me out for money or power. He sold me out for a better life. [INAUDIBLE] thing to do, but he went somewhere. He couldn't hear the hoofs and the cannons and became a good husband to a fat little country girl. He did what I should have done 25 years ago, and that's from Wrath of Empire Page one.
Acting in the middle of fighting a war stakes development over the course of the trilogy actually charts a course away from violence toward peace and contentment, finding in the very experience of fighting the truth of its limitations as a way of life.
So McClellan's work is inescapably military in its focus, and those who don't enjoy reading about military manoeuvres or army organisation may well find his books not to their taste, but to reduce his books to only their military themes would be to do them a disservice. As I have discussed, there are many fascinating political and social overtones to McClellan's work, as well as religious ones.
I've not even had time to touch on explorations of incarnation, sacrifice and the nature of the divine, which I leave you to explore for yourselves. I hope you've enjoyed this short introduction to the works of Brian McClellan. And thank you again for listening.