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bigcheese 's review for:
Promise of Blood
by Brian McClellan
This has been a very interesting read for me. Not only does it shed light on how you can take a couple short cuts and cheap jabs in your storytelling and still tell a good story, but that you can do those things and be published!
I’m not saying by any means this shouldn’t have been published, I’m only fascinated that these moments of exposition can be so crude as they are here and be let out the door and into the world. Thankfully it doesn’t happen a lot of the time.
Hearing about this being “grim-dark” made me sold on it. I didn’t really know what that term meant, aside from the fact that more mature themes are touched on. And in the first half of the book the darkest thing was Nila’s introduction. And more recently Nila talking to the recruiting officers like a character straight out of Paul Verhoeven’s ‘Flesh + Blood.’ And with all the “mature” stuff I felt like this is how all fantasy should be. The gore, the relationships, and the story are pretty nice to read about, lol. Supposedly grim-dark means little optimism for the world. I just need maturity.
I really don’t like that Ka-poel is played off as maybe 13 for a while and then she becomes 18 and played as if she has sex appeal! It was weird. I was imagining a character not unlike X-23 in ‘Logan’ and all of a sudden Taniel is like, holy shit! what was that!?
I’m not sure that all of this story is worth it. Would it be stupid to wish for an abridged versions of books over 150k words. Cutting out particular point of views unless it is crucial. Like if most P.O.V. characters was as big a part as Nila in this book.
Half of the action scenes were vibrant and vivid. They are usually tense. But a couple of times I found it hard to get an image which wasn’t fragmented and focussed on the sentence at hand. There is one scene where bullets and gunpowder are being consumed left and right but I didn’t understand what the gunpowder looks like and where it goes when triggered so as the shots fired I had to insert them in what felt like unnatural spots in the area. I didn’t like that very much, but the scene still came across to me.
I’m not saying by any means this shouldn’t have been published, I’m only fascinated that these moments of exposition can be so crude as they are here and be let out the door and into the world. Thankfully it doesn’t happen a lot of the time.
Hearing about this being “grim-dark” made me sold on it. I didn’t really know what that term meant, aside from the fact that more mature themes are touched on. And in the first half of the book the darkest thing was Nila’s introduction. And more recently Nila talking to the recruiting officers like a character straight out of Paul Verhoeven’s ‘Flesh + Blood.’ And with all the “mature” stuff I felt like this is how all fantasy should be. The gore, the relationships, and the story are pretty nice to read about, lol. Supposedly grim-dark means little optimism for the world. I just need maturity.
I really don’t like that Ka-poel is played off as maybe 13 for a while and then she becomes 18 and played as if she has sex appeal! It was weird. I was imagining a character not unlike X-23 in ‘Logan’ and all of a sudden Taniel is like, holy shit! what was that!?
I’m not sure that all of this story is worth it. Would it be stupid to wish for an abridged versions of books over 150k words. Cutting out particular point of views unless it is crucial. Like if most P.O.V. characters was as big a part as Nila in this book.
Half of the action scenes were vibrant and vivid. They are usually tense. But a couple of times I found it hard to get an image which wasn’t fragmented and focussed on the sentence at hand. There is one scene where bullets and gunpowder are being consumed left and right but I didn’t understand what the gunpowder looks like and where it goes when triggered so as the shots fired I had to insert them in what felt like unnatural spots in the area. I didn’t like that very much, but the scene still came across to me.