Promise of Blood: Book 1 in the Powder Mage trilogy

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Nila finds herself confronted with soldiers killing her noble employers one night. But she can't let the same happen to their little boy, so she smuggles him out in the hope find a safe place for him and to start a new life of her own. Field Marshal Tamas’ attempt to build a working government with his co-conspirators while securing peace with the Kez. The Verdict? Buy it, Read it, scream at your dad angrily until he caves in and reads it too. It’s what I did. Field Marshal Tamas has staged a coup against the king of Adro. His powder mages have slaughtered the king's Privileged cabal of sorcerers and the nobility has been rounded up to face the guillotine with their king. Tamas has brought revolution to his country in one bloody night to save his people and right the wrongs caused by the old regime. Yet his actions have far-reaching consequences of which no reasonable man could have conceived, and the king will prove the easiest obstacle to overcome in his quest to free Adro. The real issue I have with the female characters was that they were just bland. Rozalia Julene, and Ka-Poel are these really powerful women but they were just boring to me. It felt like they were only there to move the plot along and weren’t developed themselves or didn’t lead to significant development of other characters.

As the city reacts to the coup – the royal family and supporting lords and their families put to the guillotine, the Royalist military’s last stand, the new council in charge – Tamas sends Adamant on a mission to find out what Kresimir’s Promise is, apart from the final words on a dying Privileged’s lips. Adamant gets knee-deep in Adro’s underworld to find out what danger comes the realm’s way. Taniel chases the mystery Privileged through the city, before being retasked with taking out the last Royal Cabal member, his best friend Bo. All the while, Tamas tries to keep his new city and council in one piece, and the mighty Kez nation have smelled blood in the water and are on the way with their immense army. Easy Logistics: Largely subverted. There is quite a bit of discussion regarding the difficulties of feeding and equipping an army on the move, especially in a world like this that is still at a colonial technology level. Tamas is very confused when his food costs drop to almost nothing while the quality and quantity of the food vastly increases. It turns out that Adom, the patron saint of Adro (who is either a god or a privileged so powerful the difference is minor) has taken over cooking duties for the entire army and is producing food out of thin air. James Davis Nicoll on Five SF Visions of Society Free From Rules, Regulations, or Effective Government 3 hours ago

Civil unrest cripples the citizens of Adro in the aftermath of the revolution that obliterated the monarchy. Now, Field Marshal Tamas and his lieutenants must confront the true cost of freedom in book one of the Powder Mage Trilogy.

I have mixed feelings about Brian McClellan’s writing. This is the only book I’ve read of his and it being his debut novel, I expect I would find his more recent books better written. There were many times where I was pulled out of the book by the writing. Too many of the scenes felt like a play-by-play, he did this, and then this happened, and then this. Combined with an abundance of passive voice, the writing just felt off. As for Adamat, his storyline is a great way to get a bit of distance, a little break from all the Army and politics and it reads like an atypical Victorian detective story in all the best ways. While the world wasn’t explored as much as I would have liked, I’m impressed with how fantastical the world still feels, even with muskets and early rifles. It doesn’t feel like a world about guns where magic is shoehorned in. It really does feel like guns were simply the natural development of industrialization and that those weapons have significantly affected the world of magic. Like the plot, there’s still plenty to explore in the next books, so there isn’t much for me to expand on here.Which makes the inclusion of the guns a non-issue – even more so considering the way that McClellan wove the introduction of guns and gunpowder into the world’s magic system. Some purists might wonder at the outset just why there are apparently three – and maybe more – types of magic. However, I’ve never been overly concerned about issues like that, given the inherent magic of … magic. Love, betrayal, swords, magic, muskets and Kresimir returned, there is trouble on the horizon for Tamas in book two. I will say this now, Tamas will die; he is going to sacrifice himself to the Kresimir to save the world or his son or both. I just can’t see another out outcome for him. Thankfully we are a while away from that, maybe I should say hopefully… jaimebabb on Five SF Visions of Society Free From Rules, Regulations, or Effective Government 2 hours ago 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. The novel takes place in the kingdom of Adro, one of the Nine Kingdoms founded by Kresimir, a semi-mythical figure now worshiped, along with his nine siblings, as a deity. Magic users are usually divided into three classes:

Revolution, bloody revolution! That’s how Promise of Blood begins — with our trilogy’s main protagonist, Field Marshall Tamas slaughtering the Privileged Royal Cabal in their sleep with the help of his Powder mages, dethroning the rightful king Manhouch, rounding up the nobility and cutting that lot’s heads off while a million men, women and children watch the executions in Adopest, the capital of Adom’s public squares. Enough blood is spilt that the executioner could drown on it several times over. Powder Mages are wizards with the ability to metabolize gunpowder and use it as fuel for various magical powers, including telekinesis; they can also manipulate gunpowder, such as causing it to explode spontaneously. Tamas and Taniel are both powder mages. So many memorable side-characters — Olem, Lady Winceslav, Borbadeur; I could spend a good few minutes listing character names which’ll mean nothing to you since I ain’t spoiling any more than Ihave already. A tightly wound caseworker is pushed out of his comfort zone when he’s sent to observe a remote orphanage for magical children. Legends long hidden may rue the day when Old Gods return and Field Marshal Tamas’s coup against a failing, rotten and self-indulgent royalty balances on a knife edge. Tamas must rely on his friends and alienated son Taniel if his people and the Nine Nations are to survive.

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A couple weeks ago I announced the sale of Promise of Blood and two untitled sequels to Orbit Books. The Publisher's Marketplace announcement is thus: It wouldn’t be high on my recommendation list, but I’d recommend it to readers who cared more about plot, the magic system, and action than the characters themselves.