YMMV / The Powder Mage Trilogy

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Is Lord Vetas really a sadist? Does he derive pleasure from torturing and threatening helpless people, or does he just act like it because the perception helps cow his captives? Fell, at least, seems to think Vetas is simply pursuing his master's objectives in an amoral fashion. Nila and Faye have other opinions on the matter.
• Badass Decay: In the first book, Julene is a badass Privileged and one of the most powerful people in the world. By the third, she's a helpless, bitter, regret-filled shell who isn't sure she still wants to live. Angering an insane god can do that to you.
• Captain Obvious Reveal: Mihali uses magic when creating his food and uses it to impart magical effects on the people who eat it. This is fairly obvious more than once early on in the series before Mihali actually admits it, still acting like it's some sort of big secret.
• Complete Monster:
  • Powder Mage Trilogy: Duke Nikslaus is an arrogant Privileged, a mage, who despises Powder Mages and serves the king of Kez. In the past, when the Powder Mage Tamas's wife, also a Powder Mage, was assisting their fellow Powder Mages escape Kez, Nikslaus murdered her and presented her head to Tamas. Insulting Tamas later when he launches his coup against the corrupt nobility, Nikslaus manipulates him into striking out at Nikslaus so Kez can declare war on Tamas's own nation of Adro and brutally annex it. In the second book, Nikslaus proceeds to attack a neutral nation with his men disguised as Adro soldiers to win them to Kez's side. Nikslaus's army occupies a town with men, women and children brutally executed and Nikslaus planning to immolate the entire city while having his army slaughter any survivors. While trying to paint himself as a soldier Just Following Orders, Nikslaus takes perverse delight in his work, viewing it as a fitting way to exercise his own supposed brilliance, even being petty enough to hire a young noble to seduce Tamas's son's fiancee to publicly humiliate the family.
  • Gods of Blood of Powder sequel trilogy: Fidel Jes, grandmaster of Landfall, from the first book Sins of Empire, makes it a point to kill several men a day before his morning coffee in duels he provokes. Dedicated to stamping out any hint of resistance from the Palo people, Jes regularly conducts torture and executions and has killed so many in his duels that the stones themselves are stained from all the blood Jes has spilled. A war criminal as well, Jes had a war hero named "Mad" Ben Styke imprisoned for refusing Jes's orders to kill a group of children in war. When Styke manages to confront Jes again, Jes defeats him and orders Ben healed just so Jes can enjoy torturing him again and again. When he is ordered to locate an artifact called the Godstone, Jes takes Landfall's army, but lies to them, claiming reinforcements are coming to defend Landfall from an incoming invasion when Jes knows the city will be helpless and brutally sacked.
• Demonic Spiders: Wardens. They're not as rare as Privileged and the like, and they can take on whole squads singlehandedly.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: In a cast full of military officers and grim warriors, Mihali is a standout for being a likeable, affable, pacifist.
• Too Cool to Live: Tamas. He actively worries that his public popularity as the face of the coup will inevitably lead to more war and worries about how to avoid becoming a Napoleon figure.