Promise of Blood (book one of the Powder Mage trilogy) is fantasy, but not standard fantasy – not fantasy of the expected pattern. It’s flintlock fantasy, so the technology is different, but that’s only part of it. Brian McClellan’s book is a book in which a typical fantasy world is updating, progressing.

The book is set in a society in flux – it was once exactly what you’d expect from the genre, with wizards and magical cities and monsters in the high passes, but all of that is changing. The common people are organising into trade unions, magic mixes with musket fire on battlefields, and a new rival to the power of the mages is rising. Continue reading “Promise of Blood – Brian McClellan (Review)” →