Promise of Blood

3.5. I don't want to give it the 4, because I had a few too many complaints.

The opening felt like a slog-fest. Tamas is an asshole, and I don't like sharing a POV with an asshole near the beginning of a book. Tamas also continues to be a *stupid* asshole throughout the book, making me constantly question how he got to run this coup when he's so ignorant of so many things.

Some of the exposition is a bit clunky. People reveal things in dialogue that should be common knowledge, or something that Adamat should have researched instead of asking somebody. This makes some of the emotions from the characters seem a bit fake. The description of the privileged magic system is also too much of sharing a neat idea.

I'm still not sure if "na-baron" is a legitimate term, or just a rookie author showing his love of Dune too much.

I disagree with the way some of the sexuality is shoehorned in here. No. Do not mention magnetic sexuality as an "oh, of course he's attractive!" aside. I might be sensitive right now due to things in the news, but no. Bad Writing.

But the action scenes are good. Really good. I enjoy them a lot!

And once I got most of the basic world established, it was much easier to just read and keep going. I won't say that the mystery feels particularly complex, but it's *something* to keep me occupied and interested in continuing, so I respect that. (note now that I'm finished: the mystery became too obvious in the end, and I really hated how Adamat's storyline turned out. :( )

Taniel's story with Ka-Poel was fine. Bo was kind of fine except for the stupid fucking harem part. Julene was a bit too obviously evil, and we'll see about the rest. But I still hate Tamas. ( )

This was another one of my series-sampling audio listens, to see if I might want to pursue it in print someday.

Audio Narration
The narrator is Christian Rodska. He wasn’t a favorite. He didn’t really do anything particularly annoying, but I had some trouble distinguishing his character voices. He was also one of those narrators where I sometimes felt like I would have read the text differently in my head than how he read it. But this is actually a weird case where I wonder if my lack of interest in the characters negatively impacted my ability to appreciate the narrator who was voicing those characters. Usually it’s the other way around, if anything.

I’m usually predisposed to like narrators with English accents, so I’m surprised I didn’t like him more. Sometimes word pronunciations aren’t what I expect, but it’s usually easy enough to figure out in context. However, I had to laugh once near the end of the audiobook at an unexpected pronunciation. I was quite convinced he had said that “a geezer sprayed into the air”. It took me a minute to realize he had said “geyser”. :) I actually had to look that one up to confirm that’s really how the word is pronounced in UK English. For reasons of immaturity, I found this hysterically funny. It’s a good thing I don’t encounter geysers very often in real life because I’m not sure I’d ever be able to look at one the same way again.

Story
The story opens up just after a military leader, Tamas, has overthrown the greedy and irresponsible monarchy. Tamas is one of the POV characters, and we follow him as he tries to handle remaining threats and get things stabilized. We also follow a couple other characters who are working on various assignments given to them by Tamas. There’s a fourth POV character, the only female POV, but we see very little of her. There are different types of magical powers in this world, including that of powder mages who basically snort gunpowder to gain extra abilities.

I expected to enjoy this more than I did. I didn’t remember any details on what it was supposed to be about, but I’d seen a lot of positive reviews over the years and had the impression that this was the sort of book I would enjoy. For some reason I was only moderately interested. I can’t point to anything I actively disliked, but I didn’t feel any investment in any of the main characters, and the story didn’t grip me. Of the main characters, I probably liked Adamat the best. Some of the secondary characters seemed interesting also, and Mihali was fun. Maybe part of it was because there are a lot of fights and battles in the story, and I seem to struggle keeping my interest more with those types of scenes in audio.

I still feel like this is something I should have liked more, so I’ll most likely try it in print someday to give it one more chance. ( )

I was more entertained than I expected or wanted to be. I like swords in fantasy, guns not so much. It wasn't like I didn't have warning I mean it's pretty much built into the title "powder mage". A friend recommended the book to me and I thank them for that, it was a good book, lots of action and a fast paced story. The characters I didn't like as much except for Mihali, Ka-Poel and Adamat I didn't find them that interesting, and the only main characters I really liked were Adamat and Olem . I did like it well enough to get the next book and I'm going to start on that now. ( )

I'm not entirely sure what to think about this book.

On one hand, there are several varied magic systems in this book. You have the Privileged, the Marked, and the Knacked.

The Marked, also known as Powder Mages, are what I would have thought of as the core of the book, with the ability to basically control gun powder in various ways and to snort it as a drug, increasing their physical abilities. Side note though: It's weird that they're interchangeably called Marked and Powder Mages throughout the book. It took me more than a while to realize those two were the same thing.

The Privileged are more traditional fireball, lightning bolt sort of mages and, honestly, are more interesting. Which, for a series named after the Powder Mages, is a bit weird.

The Knacked are a fairly unique idea in that their magic is basically limited use super powers--the ability to go without sleep, for example, or a perfect memory. It's a neat idea, but I think it would be even better if it were the only magic system in the world. On top of the other two, it just seems ... busy.

So far as the actual story goes, you kick off the book with a bloody revolution: overthrowing and killing the king, along with much of the court, and all of the Privileged in the city. That's certainly a powerful start, and the rest of the book deals with the aftermath of such an event. I wish it had been a bit more focused though. The book jumps from scene to scene and viewpoint to viewpoint, sometimes skipping days or more in between. It's jarring and sometimes hard to follow.

Mostly related, I wish that there was a little more depth to the characters. You basically had Tamas the Angry, Taniel the Druggie, Adamat the Investigator, and Ka-poel the Voodoo Sidekick. I do like Adamat at least. Maybe the entire book should have been from his point of view? (Side note: Having Tamas and Taniel, both Powder Mages, be father and son was confusing. Their names are too similar. I kept getting them confused.)

And then the ending. So many things all come to a head all at once... and then it's over. A single shot and then we're in the Epilogue. It was surprising to say the least. I guess the sequels will deal with the fallout of those last few chapters, but honestly I'm not sure if this book caught me enough to convince me to read the sequels. ( )

This book is just ridiculous in so many ways.

The main plot is that Field Marshal Tamas, the highest-ranked member of the Adom military, has overthrown the king and literally a thousand other nobles to prevent the signing of a treaty that would effectively enslave them to a neighboring country. While I get it, it's pretty brutal.

I mean, the entire book is pretty brutal -- the magic system from the leads' POV is entirely about guns and other gunpowder-based weapons. It's very multi-faceted, but in summary, there are the Privileged, who are your traditional sorcerers, the Knacked, who have specific abilities such as being able to go without sleep, and the Marked (or the powder mages), who can perform feats such as igniting gunpowder from a distance and steering a bullet mid-flight. The Marked can also use gunpowder (or essentially cocaine, because that's pretty much how I read it every time in this particular context) to enhance their senses; Tamas's son Taniel can shoot two targets at once from a mile away when he's on enough powder (okay, seriously, it's literally cocaine).

So that's one third of the plot. The other two center around Adamat, a former investigator who's hired by Tamas to find a traitor trying to stop Tamas's rebellion. He also kicks off the last third, focused on Taniel attempting to stop what may be the resurrection of a long-dead god...

Anyway. I finished this in about 48 hours, with almost every spare bit of time I had outside of holiday parties. It runs at a breakneck pace the whole way through, and as much reservation I had about the coup in the beginning, I couldn't get enough of Tamas and Taniel. Thank god I'm only reading this now, after the sequels are already out, because I don't know if I could stand waiting a year for the next one.

Also apparently Brian McClellan lives in Cleveland, so there's a strong risk of me fangirling if I ever run into him. ( )