With a setup similar to Dead Tired‘s (a wizard emerges from stasis after thousands of years to find that wizards have been replaced by arrogant cultivators), J. Parsons‘ Arcane Awakening/Imperial Wizard series decides to take the premise in a far more serious direction. The protagonist here isn’t all-powerful and the setting leans more toward grimdark, though in general it tries to stay fairly upbeat and has a number of small romance subplots.
The fifth of John Van Stry‘s Wolfhounds novels covers the capture of the last few planets before the siege of the capital, meaning the upcoming sixth will mark the main series’ conclusion (according to the Afterword the author plans on writing a few more books in the same universe). While it mostly consists of political maneuvering, there’s also a decent amount of combat and romantic development.