Fantasy with gunpowder questions

[Trailblazer]

In my current series, magic is useless for combat - it's a subtle mental art, totally unsuited to the chaos of battle. And as Montero says, firearms of the period are slow and unreliable, and they're the fallback of people who don't have proper combat training (most of my characters are not warriors of any kind).

But in any case I'm not writing high fantasy, so I don't think it's an issue. It's not like all my characters are brandishing firearms - my hero carries a rapier, and uses it a lot more often than anyone fires a gun!

Ah yes another splinter I overlooked. Quite right magic does not necessarily have to have any practical use in combat.
Im thinking with tunnel vision after reading so many hundreds of books where it is, appealing to that primal desire of domination and power embedded in our psyche.

I looked you up, very interesting .

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

Pierre Pevel - my library doesn't have the first of the three (Cardinal's Blades) is it a total spoiler to start with book 2?

Not a total spoiler, no. But I'd recommend reading the first book first anyway. Does your library have inter-library loan?

Ah yes another splinter I overlooked. Quite right magic does not necessarily have to have any practical use in combat.

The book need not have scenes of combat at all. Guns might be used, for instance, only in properly conducted duels between gentlemen. Or by the aforementioned properly romantically attired highwaymen. Or under any number of other circumstances. And magic doesn't have to be used offensively at all. Or even practically. It can have it's more esoteric uses.

And do remember that in most of the books where magic is used in combat, there are also swords used in battle. And swords are, in their way, more powerful than guns (particularly the old ones where you get one, maybe two shots, and there is a high probability of a misfire), in that -- as I realized, when I wrote Goblin Moon right after a High Fantasy trilogy -- you don't have to stop and reload swords.

 

[JoanDrake]

Michael A. Stackpole's Dragon Crown War Tetralogy uses gunpowder. It's whole scenario very closely resembles the Hundred Years War. His current Crown Colonies Trilogy also mixes gunpowder and magic as it is an alternate history view of the American Revolution if there were Wizards and Dragons.

 

[Cosmic Geoff]

I imagine that fantasy novels with gunpowder in them aren't that uncommon, and the other replies seem to bear this out.
Add to the list the "A Walk in the Dark" trilogy by Alison Spedding, whose heroine joins the army, becomes a catapult artillery-person, and produces some gunpowder, or "powderfire" as it is called in the novels.
I recommend this trilogy, a rather well-written historical fantasy.
BTW, you should google Dr. Alison Louise Spedding, who seems just as eccentric and adventurous as her character!

 

[Snowdog]

Glen Cook's Instrumentalities Of The Night series has gunpowder in a medieval/renaissance alternative history setting.

 

[hitmouse]

Mythago Wood has flintlocks, IIRC

Zelazny's Amber Books have fun with gunpowder: it simply doesn't work in some locations.

 

[ratsy]

Robin Hobb's Soldier Son Trilogy has guns in it. They don't really take away from the magical element of the story. It has that Industrial Revolution feel to it for a time frame I suppose.