Monarchies and courts are ever present in Epic Fantasy. At the start of Promise of Blood, Brian McClellan’s debut novel and first installment of The Powder Mage Trilogy, Field Marshal Tamas destroys that notion by charging the king with treason and summarily executing him. The country of Adopest erupts into chaos, primarily the center of the capital where the king is executed. Tamas, though he has allies, has made enemies over the course of his military career and many see his move as a chance for Tamas to rule, which is not what he wants. Growing tension with the Kez, the enemies of Adopest, further fuels the unrest in Adopest. As Tamas struggles to maintain a semblance of calm for his country, he is beset by enemies on many sides, including those he once thought of as friends. Because of threats on his life, Tamas hires a retired investigator named Adamat to track any leads regarding the conspiracy, specifically the people attempting to murder Tamas. Another stressor for Tamas is his son Taniel, who returns without Vlora, the woman he was supposed to marry, much to Tamas’s chagrin since he basically arranged the marriage, because Vlora cheated on Taniel. Tamas is also haunted by the specter of his murdered wife, murdered at the hands of the Kez years prior to the start of the novel.
Clearly, McClellan is weaving several plot threads and characters together in Promise of Blood, because there are more characters than those I’ve already mentioned. One of those characters, is the mute ‘savage’ Ka-Poel and companion to Taniel; another set of characters are those who give Adamat added pressure for his unpaid loans, pressure in the form of threats against Adamat’s family whom he sent away from Adopest just before Tamas’s plans were set into motion. While Tamas is the primary protagonist with his own set of supporting characters, one could also consider his son Taniel secondary protagonist since large portions of the novel not told from Adamat and Tamas’ POV come from Taniel. The Field Marshall’s son is a much more flawed character than his father, he has an addiction to powder, is unwilling to murder a friend despite his father’s orders, holds a great deal of anger towards Vlora and finds himself in a strange relationship with the silent Ka-Poel.
I’ve not mentioned the magic which forms the more unique aspect of this novel and milieu. Just as gunpowder provided a great advancement in war, among other things, powder provides great powers to the Powder Mages who ingest the substance – enhanced sight, control over the bullets they fire, and endurance. Other magic in this world includes manipulation of magical essence, known her as ‘Else’, though this magic is only accessible to one-percenters of McClellan’s world.
With the coup and execution of the novel taking the very early portions of the novel, McCellelan drew me into the novel very strongly and very quickly. The slight change in pace, though not entirely smooth, made for a more relaxed pace that I felt very comfortable reading. The threads follow, primarily, Adamat’s investigations and ducking of the people to whom he owes money, Taniel on the outskirts of Adopest’s borders fighting the Kez, and Tamas’s struggles with the Church to set the nation on a better path. Oh yeah, the gods might be returning to the world and a laundress is watching over the sole heir (though not a direct heir) of the executed king in seclusion. In short, the realistic conflicts of war and civilization are tightly interwoven with prophecies and more fantastical elements.
One god in particular makes a very bombastic return, though his initial appearance as the chef Mihali (essentially a blue-collar working type) counters his supernatural background. Something of Mihali’s gruff demeanor and the overall feel of reading his scenes resonated for me with the great Bayaz of Joe Abercrombie’s First Law Trilogy. Continuing the theme of resonance, the relationship between Taniel and Ka-Poel feels very similar to the relationship between Joseph and Nico in Rachel Aaron’s Eli Monpress novels.
McClellan’s doing a lot of things in this novel, as this review might lead one to believe. But the important question is this – is he doing it well? For this reader, the answer is yes, very well indeed. I was glued to my kindle reading this novel so much so that I brought it on the treadmill and read it through the bounces as I did my daily runs. I’ve alluded to similarities, or rather, resonances with both Rachel Aaron and Joe Abercrombie, but the most obvious yet to be compared is Brandon Sanderson and Brian’s approach to inventive magic systems. No surprise since it is well known by this point to many readers that Brian had Brandon as a writing teacher in college.
While the inventiveness is similar, Brian’s sheer ability to show both positives and negatives of the powder magic is a standout. Though both Tamas and Taniel employ powder in their magic, Taniel has become addicted to the substance; the downside to ingesting the powder. It proves to be a major strain on the already strained relationship between father and son. However, that strain is an ever-present thing, especially for Taniel. He feels his father looks down upon him and has little respect for him, which adds to Taniel’s growing discontent with his father and abuse of the powder – a bit of self-fulfilling prophecy.
Perhaps the greatest over-reaching theme (for me) in the novel is the idea of change. Tamas wants to change the government from the monarchy to one more in-tune with people’s thoughts; the physical agent of change – gunpowder – plays an immensely important role in the novel; people will soon be changing their minds about the nature of their long-thought mythical gods, for they are returning.
If I can level any negative at Promise of Blood it is the imbalance of gender. The three main characters are strong, powerful and flawed men – very well rounded. The sole female whose POV we see, Nila the laundress, is less powered, driven by revenge, threatened with rape, and not entirely empowered. Taniel’s former fiancé is portrayed as promiscuous and the cause of their break-up, though she is respected by Tamas and what we see of her on the page comes across more favorably than the past which occurred prior to the novel’s beginning; Julene, a one-time ally of Tamas and Taniel, is portrayed as power-hungry, selfish, and unwilling to cooperate with her supposed allies, with very little positive light thrust upon her. The most favorable female, Ka-Poel, is mute though she communicates silently with Taniel and is more of a sidekick to the Field Marshal’s son. That said, I
suspect as the series progresses, Nila will play a larger, more important role as will Ka-Poel, and I can see a potential redemptive arc for Vlora.
In the end, Promise of Blood is an extremely engaging novel. McClellan hit the right buttons for my Epic Fantasy reading sensibilities, he’s drawn characters who made a powerful mark and whose plight I want to follow over the course of the subsequent novels in the series. The addictive narrative pace, inventive world-building, and gestalt of this novel are impressive.
I want to take some space to speak about the physical aspect of the novel. The maps, the layout, the cover art is perfect and I love the paperstock for the dust jacket. It is clear the people who made this put a great deal of effort and care into it. Orbit has designed some really nice books over the past few years, but even by their high standards, this physical book is really a piece of art in book form.
Overall, I give Promise of Blood a very high recommendation.
© 2013 Rob H. Bedford
Orbit, April 2013
Hardcover, 560 Pages
ISBN: 978-0-316- 2190-3-7
http://www.brianmcclellan.com
https://www.facebook.com/ThePowderMageTrilogy
http://www.orbitbooks.net/excerpt/promise-of-blood/
Review copy courtesy of the publisher, Orbit Books
