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A review by rosseroo
Promise of Blood by Brian McClellan
3.0
This is a case where I picked up the book because the mechanics of the setting sounded interesting: a more or less traditional medieval fantasy world where sorcery is super-rare and super-powerful, but there are also "powder mages" who can tap into and control the energy of gunpowder. I was sucked in almost immediately because it opens immediately after a coup that overthrows a corrupt king and his noble allies.
It's chaos as the Field Marshal behind the coup struggles to consolidate the peace, while royalists rally, the neighboring enemy masses at the border, a traitor from within threatens to undo all, and a powerful sorcerer seeks to summon one of the ancient gods back to cleanse the earth... One strand follows the Field Marshall, another follows his powder mage son who's at the border on the front lines, and the third storyline follows an investigator hired to root out the traitor.
On the whole, it's an engaging, if somewhat workmanlike story. It moves along nicely, and the tension ratchets slowly up, but the characters aren't rich enough to really drag one deep into the story. Each has a dash of personality and quirk or two so you can keep track of who is who, but I never quite got invested in any of them. It doesn't help that there's a supporting character who is pretty obviously very important, but is kept loitering in the background for the vast majority of the book until they finally get a chance to "surprise" everyone with how powerful they are.
I did like elements of the setting, such as the role of the church, and the ambitions of a workers union, which felt a little more thought out than in most fantasy books. But then there are other potentially interesting threads (such as one character's apparent addiction to gunpowder) that never end up going anywhere (at least in this first book). On the whole, it's a perfectly fine bit of entertainment, and I'll probably catch up with the others in the series, but it's not special.
It's chaos as the Field Marshal behind the coup struggles to consolidate the peace, while royalists rally, the neighboring enemy masses at the border, a traitor from within threatens to undo all, and a powerful sorcerer seeks to summon one of the ancient gods back to cleanse the earth... One strand follows the Field Marshall, another follows his powder mage son who's at the border on the front lines, and the third storyline follows an investigator hired to root out the traitor.
On the whole, it's an engaging, if somewhat workmanlike story. It moves along nicely, and the tension ratchets slowly up, but the characters aren't rich enough to really drag one deep into the story. Each has a dash of personality and quirk or two so you can keep track of who is who, but I never quite got invested in any of them. It doesn't help that there's a supporting character who is pretty obviously very important, but is kept loitering in the background for the vast majority of the book until they finally get a chance to "surprise" everyone with how powerful they are.
I did like elements of the setting, such as the role of the church, and the ambitions of a workers union, which felt a little more thought out than in most fantasy books. But then there are other potentially interesting threads (such as one character's apparent addiction to gunpowder) that never end up going anywhere (at least in this first book). On the whole, it's a perfectly fine bit of entertainment, and I'll probably catch up with the others in the series, but it's not special.