Looking for opinions on these Fantasy Novels

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Iron Druid Series - Kevin Hearne

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I'm interested in a review of this series. It's 9 books and I'm hesitant to start. Once I start a series, I have to finish.

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The Demon Cycle series - Peter V Brett The Faithful and The Fallen series - John Gwynne The Raven's Shadow series - Anthony Ryan The First Law Trilogy - Joe Abercrombie

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I actual left off the Joe abercrombie First Law..I have started it but put it down. Not because it wasnt good, but I just got distracted.

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just finished Brian McClellans 5 powder mage books, and thoroughly enjoyed them all. He writes like Anthony Ryan, which is a very good thing to me.

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McClellan studied under Brandon Sanderson and seems to pump out books at about the same clip. The Powder Mage books are tons of fun. Need to read the most recent one still, but I dig that whole world.

Anthony Ryan also writes like crazy. Enjoyed the hell out of Raven's Shadow and have enjoyed all of Draconis Memorial, though I need to finish the last book.

These are the guys that aren't going to make big names for themselves to last the test of time, but they're damn good craftsmen who are earning good money doing what they're doing. Always look forward to their stuff.

Main thing that stands out in Powder Mage is the setting and weaponry. A Napoleonic era setting and the arrival of black powder are pretty unique in a fantasy setting.

And the writing style is just gritty, violent, and without many lulls. Magic is done well, but not overdone. Battles are epic in scale. Just my kind of fantasy.

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A Napoleonic era setting and the arrival of black powder are pretty unique in a fantasy setting.

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I mean, I wouldn't call it totally unique. Flintlock fantasy is fairly popular. But the magic system is fun. I like how black powder doesn't just flip a normal soldier on its head, it also flips the magic world on its head.

But the best parts of those books are the setting, the breakneck pace, and the characters. Lots of twists and turns and love triangles and character growth. It's all well realized.

Essentially, the plot of Book 1bgoes something like this (from Wikipedia):

At the beginning of Promise of Blood, Field Marshal Tamas has just committed a brutal coup against Adro's monarchy. When he kills every single member of the Royal Cabal, they all utter the same mysterious phrase: "You can't break Kresimir's Promise".

Adamat, a former police inspector who is now a private investigator, is asked by Tamas to help solve the mystery. Meanwhile, Tamas is busy with purging the country's nobility and struggling to maintain peace during the inevitable civil war.

Taniel, Tamas's son and a talented powder mage who is able to consume gunpowder to give himself supernatural powers, is given the task to hunt down an uncommonly powerful member of the Royal Cabal who managed to escape during the coup. Soon it becomes clear that overthrowing the monarchy was just the beginning.

Read most of the same stuff you did. Go with We Are Legion. It’s a fun series.

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Trying to decide if I should pickup one of the following fantasy books (listening on Audible)

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I haven't read Dawn of Wonder but The Land series is solid but not amazing. Definitely worth a read but I'd definitely recommend a ton of other fantasy before it. The more you've played DnD style games the more you will probably enjoy it.

Michael J Sullivan's Riyria books that you started blow it away, and The We are Bob books are much better as well.

I'd also recommend the Powder Mage series that has been mentioned in this thread, the initial series and his current one in the same world are both excellent. Another flintlock style fantasy series that's also very good is Django Wexler's Shadow Campaign series.

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You are going to start seeing more and more of these kinds of settings and mixtures of setting / cultures come up.

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A good one of these that I didn't see mentioned was Jim Butcher's Codex Alera.

Think combination of Roman culture with elemental-based magic. There's also a cool historical tie-in that I don't want to spoil for the Roman history buffs out there who read the series.

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Jim Butcher's Codex Alera

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Extremely underrated, IMO.

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Think combination of Roman culture with elemental-based magic. There's also a cool historical tie-in that I don't want to spoil for the Roman history buffs out there who read the series.

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Really interesting area which isn't explored enough. Especially with how mystical some of those cultures were, like the Egyptians. Some sort of story in that setting would be great. And the historical aspect brings it alive so easily because you can fit it in to a world that actually existed and most people already have the imagery and some of the history in their head.

ETA: The best part of it all is that with reading stories in different settings like that, it allows new stories in a traditional setting to have their place and not seem as stale anymore.